


The Length and Breadth of Fury Road

by proprioception (sacrificethemtothesquid)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, I promise we'll get there eventually, Implied Cannibalism, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Like seriously slow, Logistics, Miscarriage, Original Character Death(s), Panic Attacks, Politics, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Survival, mentions of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:16:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 153
Words: 250,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/proprioception
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max leaves, and Furiosa stays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As they ascend on the platform, Furiosa feels the world start to wobble, and finds herself leaning on Capable and Toast. So many of the Wretched have clambered up with them, chanting her name, and she holds out her human hand to keep them away but one of the Wretched just ends up pressing his face into her palm, sobbing against cold, nerveless fingers. 

War Pups swarm them at the top, a blur of white bodies and black eyes, bobbing like disembodied skulls and lifting her up on a cloud of pale chalk and brown dust. Their movement pushes her through the tunnels, the press of sand-rough hands reverent against her face and arms. Capable is strong at her side, her grip steady and gentle. Roaring water mingles with the triumph of the crowd and the sound of engines, hot and loud and insistent as the steady rush of borrowed blood. 

She doesn’t realize she’s falling until she’s already halfway down, the dark of the tunnels slipping over her like a hood. The rock is unforgiving on bruised knees. “Easy, easy,” Capable is saying, but she’s so far away. 

“Where is Max?” Cheedo frets. “He was just here-” 

_Who is Max?_ Furiosa wants to ask, but her mouth isn’t working. The sound of water presses hard in her ears. 

“He had to go,” says the Dag. 

“What if she needs more blood?”

“She can have some of mine, if it’s possible,” Toast declares. 

None of it makes any sense. Her whole body aches, every breath a knife stabbing through her lungs. “Furiosa, I need you up,” Capable says gently. “It’s not much further, but you need to walk. I can’t carry you.”

She tries. Mothers, but she tries. She makes it three shaky steps before her legs stop responding, her nerves sputtering like an engine gone empty and sucking air. In her rig, she’d have switched to the auxiliary tank, pumped the clutch and downshifted. Instead, there’s nothing, no backup guzzoline to draw on, nothing to stop her fall, except powdery-white arms.

“We carry her,” one of the larger Pups murmurs. “We carry Imperator Furiosa.”

Other Pups chime in. “We will carry the Imperator Furiosa!”

“We carry her!”

“We will carry!”

The last thing she remembers is a swirl of white powder, luminous and dancing, as she slips into the dark.

****

He steals a motorcycle and supplies with every intention of never looking back. (That is, if he had conscious intentions; the urge to run is so deep, welling up from the furthest recesses of his lizard brain, that all he knows is that he has to leave, has to leave quickly and has to leave now.) The prospect of civilization - of being seen, of being known - feels like a noose around his throat, and his body aches to be thrown at the wide, shimmering horizon, as if drowning himself in the sun will burn away the last few weeks of captivity. 

He’s not four hours to the east when the fatigue catches up with him, dropping like a hawk from above and laying him out flat. He manages to find a jagged outcropping of rock, and lurks in its shadow as the desert shimmers around him. He doesn’t sleep, not really. He’s on a hair-trigger for the slightest noise, the barest deviation in the whisper of wind over sand enough to jerk him awake. He’s battered and sore, bruised the length of his body from the round-trip in the War Rig, and the simple inaction of being hunched over his purloined motorcycle has made him painfully stiff. His jacket is still crusted with Furiosa’s blood - but he can’t think about that, can’t think about the Wives, can’t think about any of it, so he grabs a handful of sand and frantically scrubs at the leather until its surface curls up in shreds. 

When the sun finally sets, the lizards emerge from their holes and he eats well, chasing the grit from his mouth with a few precious sips from his canteen. He can feel the fatigue heavy in his bones, feel the warmth from the sand radiating up into aching muscles, and he’s too tired to pay attention to the thoughts buzzing in his skull like flies. Lulled by a full belly, for few hours he knows perfect, unconscious rest. 

When he’s able to move, he rides on, the wind stripping away the fatigue like it strips away the sour topsoil. There are a handful of vehicle corpses along the way, and he’s able to scavenge guzzoline and a few supplies. He feels lighter than he has in weeks, the roar of the bike hard in his ears and the sand kicking up in a golden rooster tail behind him. He is a shimmering blur on the horizon, an illusion that quickly fades from view.


	2. Chapter 2

She should be grateful that the Organic Mechanic’s corpse is rotting in the sun for the vultures to eat, but right now, Capable really wishes he were back here to help.

The old Vuvalini Mari seems to have the most sound medical knowledge, but no practical skills to back it up. She can tell them what’s going on, but not how to fix it. She knew Furiosa’s lung was punctured and that she was bleeding out, but only Max knew how to relieve the pressure and top her up, and Max isn’t here now. 

With the help of the War Pups, they’ve gotten Furiosa into the Vault, where at least she is assured of fresh water and a clean bed. 

“I don’t want to be in here,” Cheedo whispers. “What if they lock us in again?”

“They won’t,” says Toast firmly. She cocks her rifle and exchanges a determined look with the other Vuvalini, Amy. “Not while we’re around.”

“It’s the safest place we’ve got right now,” agrees the Dag. “At least we know where everything is.”

Capable isn’t the Organic Mechanic, but she’s been a midwife more times than she cares to count. Addressing the gaggle of War Pups still bobbing near the doorway, she says, “I need boiling water, clean cloth, and alcohol if you can find it.” Immediately, they scatter.

“She’ll get septic,” warns Mari. She makes no move to help. 

“Honestly,” snaps Toast. “It’s like you read all these words in a book.”

Like a corpse, Furiosa sleeps. 

****

Three days into the east, the whispers start to build in the back of his skull, murmuring like a rush of water. Glory is there, but so is the dead Wife, her repeated mantra, “We are not things, we are not things,” a steady chant that starts almost below hearing but grows louder with each heartbeat. 

He’s slowed down to navigate the increasingly rocky terrain, the bike a low grumble beneath him. There’s water in pools, but it’s brackish, rimed with yellow and smelling of rot, and the sand that blows around him is stinging and bitter. He pulls his scarf up around his face, and wears his goggles even though his speed doesn’t require it. 

_We are not things._

The land is sour, and he rides until the engine sputters to a halt, and after that he walks. He finds the half-buried corpse of what might have once been a war rig smaller than Furiosa’s, but its main tank is shattered, the contents long since evaporated. There might be auxiliary tanks behind the cab, but he doesn’t want to expend the energy required to move the wreck. 

He keeps moving. 

_We are not things._


	3. Chapter 3

Furiosa sleeps, and comes awake like a truck hitting an unexpected bump, with a gasp that is aborted by the sharp stab of pain in her ribs. The pain ebbs, but only to reveal that everything hurts. Movement seems a laughably distant goal.

“You’re awake,” says the Dag, perched on the end of the bed. Over her shoulder she calls, “We don’t have to bury her yet.”

“Small mercy,” mutters Capable, bustling over with a towel and a mug. “We didn’t think you’d come around for some time.”

“How long?” Furiosa croaks. One of her eyes is swollen shut, and even the hobbled act of blinking is unpleasant. The entire right side of her face feels like an over-filled tire, every heartbeat one beat closer to an explosion. 

“A few hours, nothing more. No, stay down, I’ve got it.” Lifting the mug to Furiosa’s lips, Capable gently tilts it. “Try and drink this.” 

It’s milk, chilled by the water brought up from the earth. There’s grit and sand in her mouth, but even the act of swallowing is almost too much to bear.

It’s utterly unacceptable. She has to protect these girls. Without her, there’s only Mari and Amy between the former Wives and the untamed Citadel. Toast can shoot in a pinch, but they need supplies, weaponry, allies. The Fool is gone; that much she remembers, and although it doesn’t surprise her - as feral as he was, of course he’d run - she still can’t help but feel a flush of anger that he didn’t stay. His was a gun they desperately needed. 

She wiggles her toes and fingers, trying to console herself with the reality that despite the pain, all her remaining limbs are still connected and functional. It’s something, at least.

“Corpus?” she rasps. 

“Took some allies, barricaded himself in his quarters,” says Capable. “We sent some of the War Pups to have a look-see.” 

“He wouldn’t dare hurt us,” Cheedo breathes. 

“We did just kick his father’s corpse to the Wretched,” the Dag points out, idly worrying a hangnail. “He won’t exactly be grateful.”

“He’s fragile. He won’t move against us without reinforcements.” Toast frowns, thinking. “Every War Boy still alive is on the other side of that canyon. What did Max say? Two weeks around the mountains?”

“That’s assuming they still have cars,” Mari says. 

“Right,” Toast agrees, “although there were enough blackthumbs among them that anything that isn’t running now will be as soon as they can cobble the parts together. If we’re going to hold this place, we need to have it solidly in our hands by the time they come around.”

“The boys will listen to us,” says Amy. “You girls seem to have made quite the impression.”

“Which boys?”

“The white-painted ones. The Pups.”

“They’re _children_ ,” Capable says, horrified. “I will not ask them to fight for us. They need our protection.” 

“Some of them are old enough,” says Mari. “Our protection may involve allowing them to fight.”

Capable shakes her head vehemently. 

“It’s not a choice we can afford to make,” the Vuvalini insists. “I was their age when I first held a gun. They already know they’re destined for combat. They’re eager to help. I’m not saying we throw them to the storm, but they remain a resource.”

“It’s not right.” She looks to Furiosa. “Tell her it isn’t right.”

Furiosa is only half-listening, the pounding of her head a steady drumbeat that muffles their words. There is only one word she’s latched on to. “Max,” she croaks. “Who is Max?”

There is silence, and in her limited field of vision, she sees Capable glance around the room. “Max is the man who helped us,” Capable says gently. “He saved all of us. He saved you. You don’t remember him telling you his name?”

Everything in the canyon is strange and distant, as if someone else were narrating and she just visualized the story for herself. She can vaguely picture ascending the lift, but nothing else comes with clarity. “His name...is Max?”

“Why did he leave?” Cheedo bursts out. “He was supposed to be with us! He’s supposed to help us!”

“We’re helping ourselves,” Amy reminds her, not unkindly. 

“But he just walked away!”

“He had to,” says Furiosa, because of course he did. He was half-wild. She’d seen it the moment he’d stepped out from behind the fuel pod. The wildness had helped them, for a time, because he was good at running and they’d needed to run away. Now they were back, and staying wasn’t something he knew how to do. “Max,” she says to herself. 

“We need a plan,” interjects the Dag. “We can’t just sit in here and wait for the War Boys to dig themselves out of the canyon.”

It hurts to talk, so Furiosa rolls her eyes to Toast, although that hurts, too. “Talk to the mothers,” she rasps. Capable lifts the cup to Furiosa’s lips, and she swallows a bit more. “They’re from Joe’s inner sanctum. We’ll need their help.” She coughs, clears her throat, and continues. “Recruit a few of the Pups to run around and see who was left here. There may be a few War Boys strong enough to be a problem.”

“And this Corpus?” asks Mari. “What about him?”

“We do the same thing he’s doing,” Furiosa says hoarsely. “We count our assets, bide our time and wait.”

****

He doesn’t expect to be back at the Citadel, but there he is, in a room whose only light is a flickering oil lamp in the corner. The air is stale and thick with sweat. Instantly, he’s drenched in perspiration, his heart pounding hard in his throat. 

“You came to see her,” says the golden-haired Wife, appearing from nowhere. She is powdered with white like the War Boys, her lips chapped and oozing. Her belly is a round ball in a thin and sickly frame.

He wants to ask who, but he can’t speak, and the golden-haired Wife grabs his hand in a bruising grip. 

He knows before he sees. Furiosa is laid out on an old mattress in the corner, pillowed by filthy rags. At first he thinks she, too, is dusted with the War Boys’ chalk, but it’s her color, her pallor gone gray. Her breath whistles with each inhale, a creaking gasp like the breaths she took in the Gigahorse. _No,_ he thinks, _no, she was fine. She was okay._

“Help us, Max,” says the golden-haired Wife. “Help us.”

The femur-hilted knife from the War Rig is suddenly in his hand, its tip dark and slick. He wipes it on his trousers in a feverish movement, and then he’s straddling Furiosa like he did before, fingers gingerly searching for a space between her ribs. If she’s aware of him, she doesn’t show it; one eye is swollen shut, and the other is half-lidded and distant, every labored breath cording the muscles of her neck. _Sorry,_ he wants to say, but his throat is too tight, so he just slips the knife between her ribs as quickly and cleanly as he can. 

Her mouth falls open, but instead of gasping, it’s a strained whistle. Alarmed, Max feels on the other side of her ribcage, and thrusts the knife in. _No no no no._

“Help us, Max,” says the golden-haired Wife. “You have to help us.”

Furiosa jerks beneath him, coughing and choking on bloody foam. Max drops the knife, shaking hands trying to clear her mouth. _No no no don’t do this don’t do this please no -_

“Why can’t you help us?” demands the Wife. 

Furiosa doesn’t drag his ear down to her mouth, doesn’t whisper “Home” as if he didn’t already know that’s what she was looking for. She doesn’t fight. She just...dies, and it’s like the sun has been suddenly extinguished, leaving behind nothing but blind desperation.

The Wife grabs his shoulder, wrenches him away from Furiosa’s body. “You said you’d help us! You were going to help us!”

 _I’m sorry! I’m sorry!_ But the panic is too thick, and all he can do is shake his head. 

“You killed her!” bellows the Wife, brandishing the femur knife. “You should have helped us, and instead you killed her. You killed me!” She places the knife directly over her swollen belly, and Max flinches as it’s driven in up to the hilt before he can stop her. “We are not things!” Splendid shouts. “ _We are not things!_ ”

He wakes, coughing and breathless and soaked in dread. The desert is quiet, the only noise the the rush of windblown sand against the bike’s metal frame. He thinks, very briefly, about throwing up. 

Furiosa is alive. If he closes his eyes, he can still see her on the platform, rising to claim the Citadel. He knows this is the truth. 

Scrubbing the nightmare from his face, he heaves the bike upright, and starts pushing it forward through the wastes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Real Life(tm) keeps getting in the way of me replying to all your beautiful comments, but holy crap you guys. I write fic as a vastly deficient gesture of my gratitude to all of you who keep churning out all the wonderful stories for my grubby little hands to clutch, and the fact you've commented and liked one of MINE is overwhelming like whoa. 
> 
> 2\. Um. You're all incredible. Just saying.
> 
> 3\. Also, as a fandom have we officially decided that boltcutters are the symbol of the revolution? I am SO on that bandwagon.

“-needs her rest,” Capable hisses.

“We need to talk to Plenty,” the Dag whispers back. “She’ll want to be awake.”

“She can come back!”

“We don’t have much time.” This, from Amy. 

Just listening hurts. Furiosa considers opening her eyes, but it’s too much to bear. If her head were a radiator, it would be whistling from the pressure. The radiator would actually be better, she thinks, because the cap would blow, billowing steam and spurts of superheated water. Between the tight band of pain around her ribs and the molten agony beneath her eyes, even breathing is an exercise in torture. 

She must have made a noise, because something blessedly cool and wet is gently placed over her head, and the former Imperator of Immortan Joe absolutely does not whimper with relief. “I’m sorry we woke you,” Capable murmurs. “A representative of the milk mothers is here. Toast and I can handle it.”

It’s a long moment before Furiosa summons a useful breath. “Talk.”

There’s scuffling as people move around the room, Toast’s confident footfalls mixing with the heavy breathing and ponderous step of someone unused to physical activity. Off to her left, she can hear the faint staccato of a nervous tapping - Cheedo, bouncing her knees with anxiety.

“She’s in a bad way,” the newcomer breathes. “Can she even hear me?”

“Suborbital fracture,” offers Mari. 

“You’re so helpful,” Capable mutters.

 _“Talk,”_ Furiosa repeats, and tries to decide between screaming or passing out. 

“Oh!” The milk mother titters nervously. “My name is Plenty. One of the War Pups said you’d like to speak with us.”

Plenty. Furiosa vaguely remembers her, not as a milk mother but as a slight, dark-haired girl in Joe’s harem. She’d produced four twisted sons, barely human and mercifully stillborn, and had been consigned to the milkers before even Splendid had arrived. 

“Immortan Joe is dead,” says the Dag. “Furiosa killed him.”

Plenty giggles again, a high-pitched sound devoid of amusement. “Ammah told me she saw the corpse ripped apart.” She spits, hitting the floor with sharp disdain. “Good on you girls. Can’t say I thought I’d ever see the day.”

“Corpus is still alive,” says Toast. “The Pups report he’s holed up in his quarters with six of the healthier War Boys. We saw Rictus go down on the Road, but there’s a strong chance that Atrox, Revel and Capto survived, and are on their way back here.”

“Revel is dead,” interrupts the Dag. “I saw his brains on the windshield.”

Cheedo moans. _“Dag.”_

“What? It’s true. I wouldn’t have guessed he had any, to be honest.”

“So the Prime Imperator and his last lieutenant,” Toast continues, sounding annoyed, “plus however many War Boys survived. The canyon is blocked; we’ve got Pups on the lookout, and no one’s come from the east.”

“‘Cept scavengers,” says the Dag.

“Not our concern,” Amy points out. “They’re flies, buzzing around a corpse.”

“Everyone who could leave left,” Plenty says. “Furiosa set them on fire. We watched them pour out like ants.”

“So no one was left but Corpus and the half-lives?” 

“Most of the half-lives that could walk left to catch you,” says Plenty. 

Furiosa coughs. “Gastown,” she manages. “Bullet Farm. Status?”

The room is completely silent for several beats, and then there’s a quiet scrape of a chair. “You back with us?”

Furiosa opens her good eye, and sees Cheedo standing over her, one hand sandwiched in a broad, weatherworn tome, and a concerned frown on her face. The others are nowhere to be seen, and the shadows have changed. The passage of time registers in her stomach, the vague, whirling disorientation of a hard pull around a corner. “What?”

“You checked out,” says Cheedo, gently laying the book facedown on the end of the bed and retrieving a cup from the nearby table. She fills it from a pitcher of water and holds it to Furiosa’s lips. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.” Her face throbs, but she manages to drink without drooling all over herself. “How long?”

“Half the afternoon.”

 _“Fuck.”_ She closes her good eye, swallowing hard against frustrated tears. This is utterly intolerable. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, she doesn’t remember the ride to the Citadel, she doesn’t remember getting to this room. Even when she lost her arm, she didn’t feel this defenseless and betrayed by her body. She knows Amy and Mari will do the best they can for the girls, but right now, Furiosa is a dead weight and only bringing down their odds of survival. 

Cheedo is chattering on. “Plenty agreed to talk with the other milk mothers about supplies. Toast and Amy sent a bunch of Pups to see what arms we have, and then they went up top. Capable’s looking into medical supplies; she’s also got a small army of Pups tagging along. Dag and Mari are investigating food. I’m here.”

An irrational spike of adrenaline spurts through her system, and the fingers of her good hand twitch for her gun. “We’re alone?”

“Corpus hasn’t left his quarters,” Cheedo reassures her. “There are Pups watching all over the Citadel. If anything changes, we’ll know.”

“Pups can’t be all,” Furiosa croaks. 

“They want to help,” Cheedo says. “And the Wretched are organizing below. They’re calling you Furiosa the Boltcutter.”

That makes her chuckle, a quick spasm immediately arrested by the sharp, hot spike of her broken ribs. “Boltcutter,” she manages when she can breathe through the pain. “Nice.”

“We have allies,” says Cheedo. She looks around the room, to Splendid’s white graffiti scrawled above the door. “I didn’t really want to leave, and then I didn’t want to be back here, but...now that we’re here, after we talked to Plenty and some of the Pups...I think it’s better. We can make it better.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Furiosa warns. 

“Don’t get cynical,” Cheedo retorts, but she’s smiling. Tiny Cheedo, Cheedo the Fragile, Cheedo who Dag and Toast had to convince not to run back to Joe. Cheedo is smiling. There may be War Boys somewhere on the horizon, Immortan Joe’s shrivelled son is lurking beneath them, and Furiosa herself is less help than the sickest half-life, but little Cheedo is looking more relaxed than she has in weeks. 

It’s a small victory. For now, it's one Furiosa can live with.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s either Cheedo’s revelation or her own tanks finally running empty, but Furiosa sleeps for three days and wakes up feeling marginally less like roadkill and somewhat more like a person. The right side of her face is still incredibly tender, her eye swollen tightly shut. She’s reminded of her ribs with every shallow breath, and there are deep cuts across her shoulder that she hadn’t noticed, a result of holding up Max with her prosthesis. She hasn’t seen herself in a mirror yet, but based on the girls’ over-cautious reactions, she guesses she looks like hell. She isn’t in the Green Place, but she certainly isn’t dying historic either, and the middle ground is as good as she’s likely to get. 

Walking is less good, but she’ll be damned if she stays in bed one more day. Every muscle in her body is sore from either abuse or inaction, and the only way she’s getting back to fighting shape is to move, as hard as that is. Furiosa has Capable bind her ribs as tightly as she can, which helps a little with the pain and doesn’t help at all with breathing. 

Furiosa is a jerry-rigged old clunker, cobbled together from rust and good intentions, but as long as she’s got the guzzoline, she’ll keep running. She’s been down too long.

Heaving herself upright, she blinks away stars. “I need to talk with Corpus.”

“The Pups say he’s got four big War Boys in there with him,” Toast cautions, leaning on the doorframe. “We’ll come with you.”

In the three days Furiosa has been unconscious, Toast and Amy have become the de facto Imperators of the Citadel, taking inventory of weapons and vehicles, and assembling a makeshift army of older Pups, the stronger of the half-lives, and those among the Wretched willing and able to take up arms. Dag has spent most of her time either in the hydroponics bay or up on the terraces, figuring out their food supplies and studying old books to see what the Keeper’s carefully hoarded seeds will require for germination. Furiosa isn’t entirely sure what Cheedo and Capable have been up to, but she strongly suspects it involves mentoring their omnipresent gaggle of Pups, who seem to regard Furiosa with the wide-eyed, worshipful terror of mortals in the presence of their god. Furiosa herself is in too much pain to have any sort of patience with the notion of godhood, and the attention makes her skin crawl. “I need to go alone.”

“You need a show of strength.” Dag cocks her head. “Half your face is purple, and you walk like someone’s boot is-”

“You don’t get to go by yourself,” Toast interrupts. She’s idly flipping a pocket pistol around her index finger. “That’s not under negotiation.” Furiosa levels a glare at her, and the former Wife shrugs, unaffected. “Don’t even try.”

“Fine.” It hurts to argue anyway, and she’s going to need all her lung capacity for Corpus. She’s never been exactly close with anyone - it was better when she kept her head down and mouth shut, and only came up when she needed to bust heads - but out of Immortan Joe’s ill-formed sons, Corpus is the one she is most wary of. Rictus had been simple beneath his bulk of muscle, even sweet, but what Corpus lacked in physical strength he made up for in shrewd cunning. Furiosa has always been more effective fighting with her fists than with her words, and she’s nowhere near optimum for either right now. Corpus knows everything there is to know about the Citadel, and if he can be convinced to share his knowledge, they’ll all have a better chance at survival. “I’ll take Toast and Amy. That’s it.”

Toast holsters the pocket pistol in a smooth movement that suggests an impressive amount of recent practice. “Good. Let’s go talk to the little prick.”

“No killing,” warns Capable. 

“Unless we have to.”

_“No killing.”_

Furiosa glares at her, and gets no traction. Her head is still pounding, and her newly-monocular vision makes everything seem flat and vaguely dreamlike. She has no energy to argue. “Fine,” she says tiredly. “Let’s move.”

It’s easier said than done. What should have been a ten-minute walk takes considerably longer, especially with the introduction of stairs, and by the time they reach the last step, Furiosa is shaking and drenched in sweat. She feels naked without a smear of black across her face, but the deepening bruises will have to do; she looks more Vuvalini than Imperator now anyway, in black trousers that hang off her hips, and a loose white shirt that Cheedo insisted would hide the bandages around her ribs. Wearing her prosthesis was out of the question; even if she could tighten the straps around her waist, the deep gashes across her shoulder are barely closed, and any weight would tear Capable’s careful stitches.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asks Toast.

Furiosa doesn’t dignify that with a response. What she _wants_ is to curl up and sleep for a month or ten, but what she wants has never been an option. 

She hasn’t been inside the room Corpus shared with Rictus. Joe didn’t waste his precious breeders on his imperfect sons, and later, the closest she got to Joe’s inner sanctum was to meet with him amid the milkers above the water pipes. 

Toast bangs on the door. “Furiosa to see Corpus. Open up!”

There’s a brief pause, and then a War Boy yells back, “We don’t talk with no traitors!”

Furiosa takes a breath, recognizing the voice. “Tork, is that you? Open up.” 

“No traitors!”

“I’m here to talk.”

The door abruptly opens, and suddenly there’s an arm at her throat and pistol shoved under her chin, the jab of cold steel knifing through her broken face. The War Boy shoves her hard against the wall, oblivious to Toast’s furious shout and the alarmed yells of his compatriots. “Talk? Just gonna _talk_? The mighty Immortan shredded, and she says she wants to talk.”

“My argument was with Joe, not Corpus,” she rasps. Raising her arms tugs hard on her ribs, broken pieces grinding against each other, but she does it, slowly, trying to channel the steady strength of metal and hydraulics. Tork’s hooded eyes dart to her naked stump, to the twisted lump of scar tissue folded at the end. 

“One wrong move, and you’re shredded as well,” warns Amy, her rifle pressed to the back of Tork’s powdered skull. Toast has a pistol in each hand, trained on the other two War Boys. 

“Just here to talk,” Furiosa repeats. 

“Thought you was something big,” the War Boy sneers. “Never were no War Boy, no true Imperator. Gave you everything, he did, but you just went and took what weren’t yours. You’re just an angry bitch who couldn’t-”

Furiosa hits him. Her face hurts and her ribs hurt and every bone in her body is heavy with fatigue, and she absolutely will not measure dicks right now. While he’s staring at her stump, she jerks a knee into his crotch, grabbing his pistol and twisting hard. It’s a short, brutal fight, and when it’s over, her former subordinate is on the ground missing the back half of his skull, the deafening crack of the bullet ringing through the halls. 

Toast and Amy have the other two War Boys down before Tork’s body even falls. The former Wife spits at the corpses. “No killing, my ass.” She looks at Furiosa. “You good?”

Furiosa nods. Despite the Pups’ breathless assertions, the Boys were obvious late from the Bone Shop, covered in tumors and weeks away from their half-lives. It was barely a fight, and she’s floundering, running on half her cylinders over loose and shifting sand. 

Corpus is by the window, eyes wide and chest heaving. “Are you here to kill me, too?” the little man wheezes. 

It’s warmer than she expected, with the windows open wide over the desert. In the distance, she can see the hazy towers of Gastown. Suddenly, she misses her Rig, misses the bold certainty of reinforced wheels gobbling the distance down Fury Road. “I’m here to talk.”

“You killed those Boys!”

“They didn’t like talking,” Toast drawls, but falls silent at a glance. 

Furiosa hooks a nearby stool and pulls it over in front of Corpus’s wheelchair, easing herself down before the shaking in her legs becomes obvious. “Our goal is survival,” she says. “I suspect that’s your goal as well.”

“Just wait until the others get back,” snaps Corpus. “You’ll never last.”

“The pass is closed,” Furiosa says calmly. “They’ll have to go around the mountains.”

“Two weeks, at least,” adds Toast. “Plenty of time for us to dig in.” She twirls her pistol for emphasis. 

“You looked better with long hair,” Corpus says.

She sucks her teeth. “At least I have hair.”

“We’re offering a truce,” Furiosa breaks in. “Work with us, and we’ll make sure you’re protected.”

“Protected? Bah.” He spits, aiming for her feet but hitting the ground slightly beyond. “Dad gave you everything, even,” he adds breathlessly, “a second chance, and you stole his most precious treasures.”

 _We are not things,_ Angharad’s voice informs her, _and neither are you, Furiosa._

“You have our word,” she says. 

“Your word is nothing.” Corpus lifts his chin. “You’re a thief and a traitor. You may think you’ve won, but what have you gotten? A fortress of children and cripples? You have no guzzoline, no allies. Kill me or don’t. I’m not telling you a fucking thing.”

Toast raises her pistol to oblige, but Furiosa waves her away. “You have time to reconsider,” she tells Joe’s last surviving son. “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Fuck you,” he grinds out. The pink scar on his chest wavers like the Fury Road in the sun. 

Furiosa limps out of the room, Toast and Amy silent behind her, but by nightfall, Corpus is dead anyway. One of the Pups finds his wheelchair in front of the window, empty; there’s a smear of blood on the edge of the rock. It looks like he’d pushed himself out, his fragile little body making the very long drop into the seething Wretched camp below. 

The news surprises no one. “Good riddance,” mutters the Dag, but Furiosa isn’t so sure. 

Without Corpus, they have no idea how deep the aquifer is, or how many people the hydroponics bays can feed. Furiosa only has a basic idea about the trade agreements with Gastown and the Bullet Farm. She knows Joe had guzzoline and supplies hoarded somewhere, but she doesn’t know where. It’s a huge setback, looming above them like an oncoming dust storm. The Wretched are clamoring for water and food, the War Pups are looking to Capable and Toast for guidance, and at some point, the water pumps are going to run out of fuel. Corpus had known exactly what he was taking from them, and it's the one thing they need most.

The walk back from Corpus’s room feels like a death march, and when they get back to the Vault, Capable takes one look at Furiosa and starts shrilling at Toast. Sometime during the fight with the War Boys, she’d split the stitches on her shoulder, and hadn’t noticed the seeping bloodstain down her back. She lets Cheedo help her back to bed, and lies in the cool, dark alcove, trying to breathe through the white agony in her head and chest. 

She needs to get it together, to find the resources they need. Didn't she promise them the Green Place? She can't fail them now. She needs to keep moving, and instead, she's stuck, wheels spinning uselessly as the sand drifts around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Your comments are Aqua Cola, and I am unworthy. I'm trying to write the rest of this as fast as I can. I'm not entirely sure where it's going, but neither are our friends. 
> 
> 2\. It was pointed out I had a duplicate section earlier. That's now fixed. Thanks Antarctica_or_bust!!
> 
> 3\. Rather than telling y'all how much I love you, I'll keep writing. It's more heartfelt that way.


	6. Chapter 6

One of Toast’s first acts as de facto Imperator had been to break into Immortan Joe’s private rooms to scout for anything useful. She’d bought the unwavering loyalty of a group of Pups by promising them a ride in the Gigahorse, and they quickly and efficiently stripped the rooms, unearthing weapons, a large cache of pre-War rations, miscellaneous electrical equipment, and the written details of the Immortan’s reign. The Pups brought every scrap of paper they could find to the Vault for the former Wives to review, armfuls of loose sheafs and worn ledgers. 

“Is this...poetry?” Toast wrinkles her nose, holding up the offending artifact.

Cheedo flips through her stack. “There’s more over here. There’s...lots more.”

“His soul was black, so he spilled it all over dead trees.” The Dag sniffs. “It’s not even very good.”

Furiosa is propped up by the window, taking shallow breaths and slowly working through one of the ledgers. Joe’s handwriting is a frustrating mess of random capital letters, a single word spelled differently often within the same sentence. She’s never been a strong reader, and to further complicate matters, her right eye is still swollen shut. The pages are a series of names and dates. She’s not sure what it means until familiar names suddenly start popping out at her, Ara and Belly and Cunt and Bitten, women she knew a long time ago and hadn’t seen since. These are former Wives, and the dates he’d-

Blood pounds in her ears. Her fingers rest over her own name.

“What is it?” Amy asks quietly. She alone has noticed Furiosa’s sudden stillness; Mari is asleep in the next room, and the girls are doubled over, shaking with hysterical laughter as Toast stages a dramatic reading of a Joe-penned opus. 

Furiosa swallows, channeling air out through her nose. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” 

“Is it useful?” the Vuvalini presses. 

Most of the women listed are dead; those who aren’t are either milkers or sitting in this room. Furiosa closes the book, clenches trembling fingers around the edge. She tries to think of engines, of superheated gas forced through pistons, of order and power created from explosive chaos. 

“It doesn’t help us,” she says. “It can be burned.” 

 

****

 

Plenty comes back, bringing a jar of milk for them to share. “You’re looking...better,” the milker tells Furiosa. It’s a generous allowance.

“She’s upright, anyway,” says Toast. “That’s something.”

Furiosa eases herself into a chair. Since her trek up to Corpus’s room, she can barely walk across the room without getting dizzy. It’s galling, and she’s been snappish and unpleasant to everyone. Her only redemption is that her swollen face, exacerbated by her fight with Tork, makes talking equally unpleasant.

“How are the mothers?” Capable asks. “Is everyone all right?”

“We’re fine, thank you.” Plenty smooths her hands over the white fabric draping her ample thighs. “We’re grateful for what you’ve done, and for the girls for smoothing the transition as much as they can.” She nods at the former Wives. “We’ve discussed it, and the decision is unanimous - whatever you need us to do, we’re with you.”

“Even if that means still producing milk?” Furiosa says.

“No!” Capable bursts out, “We can’t force them-” but Plenty is already nodding and holding up her hand.

“Yes. That was discussed as well. We’re intimately aware that our milk is what keeps Citadel strong, and even with the demise of the People Eater, we will still need something to trade.”

“We can’t hold them in slavery like Joe did,” Capable insists.

“We are not slaves,” Plenty admonishes. “We are bargaining with the only leverage we have.”

Furiosa nods. “What are your conditions?”

The milk mother crosses her arms. “Agate and Thimble want to leave. They’re agreed to produce for one more tank run, but beyond that, they want out.”

“Done.” Never mind there isn’t anything to pull the tanker, not with her beloved War Rig under rubble in the pass. 

Capable frowns. “Why can’t they stop now? We’re not chaining them - we _aren’t_ chaining them, are we?”

Plenty shakes her head. “Our chains are cut. We remain because we choose to. It’s a painful thing to stop nursing so abruptly, and they know this. We all know this. They’re also the newest mothers, and the most able to leave.” She doesn’t say that they have no families to go back to; Immortan Joe’s brutal efficiency is well understood. “The rest of us, well…” She snickers, and slaps her wide belly, sending it rippling like salt wastes under the midday sun. “What else are we suited for? I won’t be riding lancer anytime soon. We’ll produce milk until there is something better for us to do.”

“I’m studying new seeds,” says the Dag. “Would you be willing to help in the gardens when you are not nursing?”

A wide grin splits Plenty’s face. “Yes. I think that would be acceptable.”

“The War Pups,” says Cheedo. “Capable and I were brainstorming plans for a school. Would some of the the mothers be willing to teach?”

“We certainly aren’t scholars,” Plenty titters. “But most of us can read. I’ll talk with the others. It could work.”

“Good,” says Furiosa. “Do you have any other concerns?”

“Food and water. We’re big girls, but it takes calories to make milk.”

“Understood.” She’s had Capable wrap her ribs again, and feeling a little dizzy from shallow breathing. The urge to cough is an ever-present tickle at the back of her throat, but coughing amounts to kicking herself in the ribs. “We found Immortan Joe’s records. He’d accounted for about twenty liters per person per day, and based on the aquifer’s discharge rates, it can support at least a thousand people.” It's an astonishing amount of water, more precious even than guzzoline. 

“We’re nowhere close to that,” says Toast. “Not even if we’re supplying everyone on the ground, and in Gastown, and the Bullet Farm.”

“So we have enough water,” says Furiosa. “Capable, what did you discover about the food?”

“It’s more problematic.” She wipes a red curl out of her face. “The hydroponics support about two hundred people. The gardens up top produce less than half that, but Dag is convinced with her new seeds and some of the techniques she’s found, we can vastly increase production.”

“Two hundred feeds all of us here,” Plenty says. “I don’t see how that’s problematic.”

Capable shoots her a hard look. “The people on the ground have nothing. We are responsible for them as well.”

“They came to us,” the milk mother points out. “We can give them water, but we have to take care of ourselves first. If we fall, everyone falls.” It’s the hard calculus of life in the desert. Capable scowls, but doesn’t argue. 

The matter is settled. No matter what else happens, right now, they have the milkers on their side.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I tend to write like sewing a quilt: individual patches, and then attaching them together as they fit. Today's a stitching day.

The next morning, Furiosa limps over to the communal table. Joe’s papers are in stacks and piles around the room, several of Toast’s favorite poems tacked to the wall. 

Capable’s spoon of porridge clatters back into the bowl. “Your eye,” she gasps. 

“It’s a beautiful bruise,” Toast says. “And the swelling’s gone down some.”

“ _No_ , look at her _pupil_!”

“Leaves turn brown when they die,” observes the Dag. “Is her eye going to fall out now?”

“Don’t _say_ that,” Cheedo hisses, and scrambles away from the table.

The last time Furiosa saw her own reflection was in the rearview mirror of the War Rig, but a pretty, scrolled antique is unearthed from somewhere and thrust in front of her face. Alarmed voices escalate like the sudden rev of an engine, but it’s muffled, as if she’s been thrown in icy water and is paralyzed, sinking into its depths. 

Fully half of her face is a mass of purple and yellow and brown, a swollen microcosm of sunset bubbling under her skin. Her right eye is barely open, the sclera bloody and inflamed. There’s a layer of something dark over her iris, a heavy pocket the color of used motor oil. She’d just assumed the swelling was impeding her vision, but it’s in her eye. She’s _blind_ in one eye. 

First he took her arm, and now he’s taken her eye. He’s dead, he’s _dead_ , she ripped his fucking jaw right off his fucking face, but he went to Valhalla with half her vision clutched in his murderous claw. The Green Place is sour and dead, the Vuvalini all but destroyed, the Citadel spinning away from them -

“Furiosa.”

Someone is keening, hard and shallow, a terrifying sound like metal being rent into sparks.

“ _Furiosa_! Look at me.” 

There’s a sharp jab of pain in her good arm, and suddenly, it’s Toast, pinching her hard and staring intently into her face. “Stay with us,” the former Wife commands. 

She hits the brakes in a full stop, slamming back into herself and locking it down. She needs the steady weight of the gear shift in her hand, but she’s not in her Rig, she’s sitting on the ground in the Vault, her good hand fisted protectively at her waist. Toast is kneeling in front of her, the Dag staring down curiously and Capable hovering nearby, clutching her hands to her mouth. 

“Hyphema,” offers Mari.

Capable whines and shoots her a dark glare.

The Dag trails a thoughtful hand across her belly. “If the sprog’s a girl, I’m calling her Hyphema.”

“Don’t you dare,” Toast snorts. 

“It’s not funny!” snaps Capable. “Look at her eye!”

“Your eyes are a little yellow,” says Amy quietly, kneeling beside Toast. “You should be drinking more.”

“I’m pissing blood,” Furiosa mumbles. It scares her more than she wants to say, but she’s convinced herself it’s all a natural part of healing the wretched mess that are her internal organs. Still, the less she drinks, the less often she has to see brown liquid pooled in the bottom of the pot.

Mari clicks her tongue. “Bruised kidney." 

It’s too much for Capable, who has been teetering on the edge of hysterics. With an anguished howl, she explodes like a blown tire. “It’s not _fair_ ,” she wails. “You obviously know what’s going on, but you can’t be bothered to help her. She was _dying_ in front of us, and you just _sat_ there and let Max take over, and now _Max isn’t here_.” She stamps a foot in fury, two bright spots of color high in her cheeks. “We need Furiosa, and we need you to do your job and help her!”

Mari folds her arms, face utterly blank. “Helping you survive is not my job,” she says quietly, but there’s no mistaking her tone for kindness. “I am here because I want to be here. I am not beholden to you, and I am not someone for you to order around.”

“Forget _me_!” Capable is shaking, hugging herself to keep from launching across the room. “Help _her_. She’s one of you, she’s your daughter, she needs your help!”

Furiosa thinks of the Keeper, of her peaceful smile and empty body. “Capable, it’s fine,” she says. 

“ _It’s not fine_!” Capable whirls to face her. “She’ll let you die, you know that, right? She would let you die and she’ll just stand there and-”

“Bright red or pink?” 

They all turn to look at Cheedo, who is perched on the table with a heavy book splayed open over her knees. She’s got one finger in the middle of a page, and is looking expectantly at Furiosa. “Urine. Bright red or pink?”

“Dark,” says Furiosa. “Like a bruise.”

Cheedo consults the book, flipping to the next page. “Pain on urination?”

She sighs. “No.” She’s no stranger to being probed - she’s missing half an arm - but Cheedo is looking at her with an excitement that borders on feral.

“Nausea?”

"Not really." 

“Lower back pain?”

She shakes her head, once, quickly. “I’m beat to hell, and you’re asking if my back hurts?”

Another flipped page. “This says that unless the bleeding increases, you should take it easy and the kidney will recover on its own.” She glances at Mari for confirmation. “Right?”

The Vuvalini inclines her head.

“And your eye,” Cheedo continues, opening to another section. “H...i...nope, h...y...Hyphema.” She reads for a moment, furiously scanning the words. “This is all for people before the War.” She shrugs. “Keep your head above forty-five degrees, and it might drain?”

“The. _Fuck_?” spits Capable. 

“It’s a test,” says Toast slowly.

“It’s a lesson,” corrects Cheedo. She gestures to the books piled around her. “We’ve got the knowledge. If we can’t find it, none of us are worth saving.”

A smile twitches across Mari’s lips. 

Capable is struck dumb. 

“That’s the way it is with the Vuvalini,” Furiosa says quietly. She remembers the sharp sense of betrayal and utter bewilderment when Katie, her favorite mother-sister, started hitting her for no discernable reason. She remembers the moment when frustration and fear made her rise up and fight back, and how Katie had smiled through bleeding teeth, exactly like Mari is smiling now. “You figure it out.” After she’d started fighting back, Katie would correct her, show her how best to hit, how to duck and how to roll. Katie had wanted her fierce and fighting; Mari has been waiting for one of the girls to show the same spark. 

“People could _die_ ,” Capable breathes, incandescent. 

Mari regards her solemnly. “That is the most important lesson of all.”


	8. Chapter 8

It’s as if the floodgates have been opened. Cheedo and Mari are locked together, transmission gears finally fallen into sync. Buttressed with pillows and utterly raw with the throbbing ache in her face and chest, Furiosa sits in the window and watches them work. Now that she has a pupil, Mari is a surge of nitrous, Cheedo feverishly taking notes and asking questions in her wake, soaking in the answers the way thirsty soil soaks in a hard rain.

The old Vuvalini seems tentatively thrilled to have found a suitable pupil. Furiosa is their primary patient, convenient if not eager, and when they’re not prodding her, Mari and Cheedo disappear for hours, ostensibly down in the Bone Shop with the leftover War Boys. They come back solemn and dusted with chalk.

“I wish Miss Giddy were here,” Cheedo says mournfully, carefully washing the dust from her hands and face. “She knew so much. Where did she go?”

“Joe probably took her on the Road as bait for us.” The Dag scowls. “Hope she survived.”

Toast shakes her head. “She’d have been on the Gigahorse with Joe.” Another source of priceless knowledge, gone.

Capable sulks for a few days, exquisitely angry, but abruptly seems to realize that being upset with Mari accomplishes nothing, and if she wants to partake in the Vuvalini’s tutelage, she has to come to terms with her method of teaching. The girls are largely finding their places in the post-Joe Citadel - Cheedo with Mari, Toast with her guns and Pups, the Dag with her plants - but Capable is flailing, alternately hovering over Furiosa and taking refuge among the Pups. At night, she lies awake and red-eyed on the rug, sleeping skeleton-faced children nested around her and spilling out of her arms.

It’s only been five days since their ascent on the lift, and they are seven women trying to rebuild the throne of a warlord who’d ruled this patch of dust for close to forty years. Angharad haunts them, the fallen messiah, her words like gaping wounds carved into the walls. Mari and Amy don’t speak of their lost sisters, but the desolation of the Vuvalini is palpable, roots and branches torn away from a tree that cannot regrow. It was always going to be a hard run; the others are making headway, but Capable is somewhere behind them, spinning in the mire.

Furiosa understands more keenly than she cares to admit. She’s not a politician. There have been days of her life - weeks, even - when she hasn’t spoken aloud, has just gripped her wheel and gunned the engine. She’s used to relying on her body, to flooring the throttle and immediately feeling the surge of power, but even getting up to take a piss renders her nauseated and quivering with fatigue. “You have to let yourself heal,” Mari says gently, but Furiosa can’t, she doesn’t have time. Survivors from the pass are roaring around the mountains, ready to retake the Citadel. Gastown and the Bullet Farm loom on the horizon, their mirrors cancerously dark and silent. The Wretched throng around the outfall, supportive of the regime change only as long as the water keeps flowing. Toast has sent legions of Pups scurrying through the bowels of the pipeworks, but so far, they haven’t found the fuel tanks, and no one knows when the pumps will fail. 

The last time Furiosa felt this trapped, Immortan Joe was sweating above her. It’s a memory that rises in her throat, choking off her air and leaving her ice-cold and shaking. Her instinct is to hit something, to push her rage into her cylinders and turn it into motion. Instead, she paws through Joe’s papers, half-blind and unsure if what she’s looking for even exists. She eats a little of the gruel Cheedo offers, and lies awake at night, propped up by pillows and smothered with worry. 

 

****

 

She doesn’t remember drifting off, but the prickly sensation of being watched is heavy on her skin. Furiosa opens her good eye, and blinks to see Mari, standing in the doorway to the alcove. Wordlessly, she shifts on the bed, and the older woman comes over to slide under the blankets beside her. They are nose to nose, Mari smelling of warm healing herbs and the faint acrid tang of gunpowder. 

Mari reaches out, her fingertips ghosting over the swollen ruin of Furiosa’s eye. She doesn’t apologize for holding back; Furiosa doesn’t expect her to. The Vuvalini are all but destroyed, first by the slow taint of the land and then by the hard run back to the Citadel. Everything hurts - that was what Katie had taught her, all those years ago, the strength of her love rendering her instruction all the more harsh. Furiosa understands this. Mari doesn’t want her to die - she has never wanted to lose any of those she loves - but if hardening the girls required Furiosa’s death, it would have been done. Mari would have grieved deeply, but she would have kept going. They all would have, and that would have been the point. 

Furiosa tucks her head under Mari’s chin, eyes burning, and feels the old Vuvalini relax against her. Their fingers find each other beneath the sheets, intertwining like the long chain of mothers and sisters Furiosa wears beneath her skin. 

“I’m afraid we’ll fail,” Furiosa whispers thickly. 

Mari hums. “Your bike’s still moving, girl. Don’t burn these tires yet.”

The last thing she remembers is the faint touch of Mari’s lips against her hair.


	9. Chapter 9

He rides.

He rides until he can’t, and then he walks until he finds more fuel. It’s a cycle as certain as the rise and set of the sun. (As certain the rise and fall of Furiosa’s chest beneath his knife.)

Five days to the east, he finds an abandoned service station and the skeleton that guards it. The guzzoline in the deep reservoirs is too gummy to use, but he finds two dusty jerry cans behind the register, and two more in the stockroom. All four seem relatively fresh. He didn’t notice any tracks around, but it doesn’t seem wise to stay; he fills his tank and straps the rest to the back of the bike, heading back into the waste before other scavengers find him. 

There’s a strange peace to be had in living for survival. Information about his surroundings - potential threats, territory markers, things to scavenge - it all flows through him like the wind. He finds water and he drinks. He finds food and he eats. He finds guzzoline and he rides, sometimes fast and sometimes more slowly, until he’s tired, and then he snuggles up next to the bike and lets the heat of the tailpipe chase away the chill of the desert night. He catches lizards and skirts around the edge of raiding parties. He doesn’t need to think. He just needs to act, a chorus of voices murmuring in his wake. 

_We are not things._

_Help us, Max! Why can’t you help us?_

_Who killed the world?_

 

****

 

At first he’s not sure where he’s going, but the longer he’s on the motorcycle, the more obvious it becomes that he’s skirting the spine of the mountains. There’s only one thing on the other side that he could possibly care about, and that’s his car. He might have been able to take the bike through the canyons, but he doesn’t have the firepower to deal with the Rock Riders. Reclaiming his car isn’t a conscious thing; it’s the closest thing he has to a soul, and it’s calling to him across the waste.

His days and nights blur together, a haphazard pastiche of diurnal living. The voices bubble up from deep inside the black matter of his skull, distinct even above the roar of the engine. Faces and bodies flicker the corner of his vision like shadows. 

They cut his hair and took his blood, but he’ll be damned if he lets them keep his car.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Shit, I've never had so many kudos or comments. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Don't mind me, I'll just be curled up over here in a ball of self-conscious glee.
> 
> 2\. Okay, I'm not saying I downloaded a shitty pirated version of the movie - that would be illegal - but I've recently become _very aware_ I missed a few little things in earlier chapters. I won't correct 'em, but I know they're there.
> 
> 3\. I found a link that lists all of the dialogue. It's more or less correct as far as I can tell, and I thought some of you might find it helpful: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=mad-max-fury-road
> 
> 4\. I feel like I had a fourth point, but I can't remember what it was.

She’s staring blankly at one of Joe’s incomprehensible ledgers, when Cheedo slides into the window next to her. “Anything good?”

Furiosa blinks, and shakes her head briefly to clear it. In the two days since the swelling in her eye went down enough for it to open, enough of the blood has drained from her pupil that she can make out shapes and light. It feels like she’s staring at the sun, everything haloed and indistinct; it’s even more disorienting than the darkness, so Capable’s fashioned a patch. Her contingent of War Pups find this even more fascinating, and much to Furiosa’s annoyance, a couple of them have added black stripes of grease around their heads. “I think it’s a record of trade between us and Gastown. I’ll have to have Toast look over it; everything’s running together.”

“Mari and I talked to Capable,” Cheedo says quietly. “You have to stop binding your ribs.”

Furiosa forces herself to be calm. It feels like an accusation, like she’s being reprimanded, but there is no rebuke in Cheedo’s eyes. “Why?”

“It prevents you from breathing properly, from your belly. You run the risk of getting lung fever.”

It’s not the bandages that prevent Furiosa from breathing properly, it’s her fucking _ribs_ , the quick stab of pain every time she inhales. Binding is the only thing that makes walking bearable. Binding is the only thing that is allowing her to be functional right now. For a brief, stomach-churning moment, she wonders if they are all conspiring to get rid of her, to remove anyone involved with Immortan Joe’s leadership. It’s insane, it’s absolutely insane, and she has to slam on her brakes to arrest that line of thinking before it goes any further. 

She presses her human hand into her good eye, scrubbing hard. “I’m going crazy sitting here,” she forces out, her voice a hard growl like an engine straining against too low a gear. 

“We know,” Cheedo says, and puts a sympathetic hand between Furiosa’s shoulderblades. It’s maybe the only place that doesn’t still hurt. “Mari and I’ve been going through the Mechanic’s books. We found some painkillers in the Bone Room, but we can’t give you any until your eye heals without running the risk you’ll hemorrhage again.”

No binding, no painkillers. It’s like being trapped in sand, unable to move. “How long?”

“Now that your eye is draining, only a few more days. Once that’s clear, we can give you something to help with the pain.” 

She can tell Cheedo means to reassure her, but propped up in her window, Furiosa has felt every second of shadows’ slow progression across the room. “And the ribs?”

Cheedo bites her lip. “At least a month, probably more.”

It’s been six days. If they turned around immediately, the survivors of the pass will be rounding the edge of the mountains by the time the sun sets tonight. They will be pushing their motors, blazing with nox and vengeance. Some of them will have run out of fuel, but there were three war parties after the War Rig; the survivors will scrounge and scrape and pillage their way back to the Citadel. It would be utter folly to discount the inventiveness of their rage.

They will be on the horizon in seven days, and Furiosa will not have the strength to meet them. This is exactly what she’s feared, the harsh reality she hasn’t wanted to acknowledge. “A month,” she says. The words are calm, controlled, exactly the opposite of the storm boiling inside of her. 

Cheedo nods. 

A feral scream rises in her throat with the sharp taste of bile, but she _hurts_ , she doesn’t have the breath to howl. Instead, she shoves herself out of the window, wheezing against the stab of pain in her ribs. 

“Get Toast and Capable,” says Furiosa grimly. “We’re going to the Repair Shop.”

 

****

 

She has a spare prosthesis in her room - a previous design, one that’s heavier and less maneuverable than the one she lost to the Gigahorse’s tires - but the scabs over the deep slices on her shoulder are so fresh they weep at the slightest movement. Instead, she walks into the Repair Shop with Capable and Toast, as naked as she’s ever been in front of the blackthumbs - bare face, bare stump, her only war paint the yellow-ochre-purple of her bruises. 

“Oi!” shouts Toast, raising her arm. There’s only a handful of Repair Boys in the shop, and they obviously know her, because they drop their tools and congregate. They are obedient but wary, regarding Toast as if a live adder had suddenly dropped within their midst and announced friendly intentions. “Listen up!”

When Furiosa steps into view, her name goes through the room like a shiver. “Boltcutter,” she hears someone murmur. There’s a palpable wave of energy that heats the room like a shockwave, and she’s suddenly engulfed by skull-faced Repair Boys, each one grabbing her head and knocking his forehead against hers hard enough that stars spark in her vision. “Furiosa!”

These are her Boys, the ones who patched up her War Rig after every run. “Keno,” she chokes out, eyes blurring. “Maz. Spade. Jammer.”

“Easy,” Toast cautions. “She’s still in rough shape.”

They back away immediately, wide-eyed and hovering like Pups. “They said you was still alive,” Spade mutters. 

“Knew you’d come back,” adds Maz. “Furiosa ain’t no traitor.”

Jammer nods. “Need a new arm, boss? We can do that.”

Furiosa swallows hard, wiping her nose with her good wrist. “You think I’d let you hacks make me an arm?” she manages, her heart overflowing. 

“ _Fuck_ , Jammer,” says Keno, and hits him upside the head. “You know nobody touches the boss’s tools.” 

The others cough and scuff their feet, but all four of them are red-eyed and sniffling. 

“You all right, boss?” Maz asks quietly. “I mean. You know.”

“Be awhile before I’m driving,” she says, gesturing first to her ribs and then to her eye. “I’m a bit busted up.”

Jammer chews on his lip. “But you will drive again, right?” They’re all looking at her now, needing to know she’ll lead them like she once did. 

Furiosa wants to drive again more than anything else in the world, to feel the pommel of the gear shift hard under her good hand, the throttle humming underneath her skin. She’s not made for sitting here in the Citadel; she’s an engine made to run hard and fast and unstoppable across the waste. It must show in her face, because Keno smacks Jammer again and says, “The fuck kind of question is that.”

They’re all quiet awhile, stealing glances at her as if they can’t quite believe she’s real.

Finally, Maz asks, “Boss, what happened? I mean, you left, and then everyone was saying you’d gone rogue, that you’d traitored him. And now you’re back, and everyone else ain’t.”

They trust her, like the others had trusted her, and she doesn’t know how to explain what happened any better than she did when Ace was hanging off the door of the rig. She doesn’t know how to explain what’s coming, of what needs to happen. 

Capable saves her. “Immortan Joe betrayed _us_ ,” she says, as if it’s something they all should have known. Furiosa jerks her head around, but Capable is standing tall and firm, a strange conviction shining in her eyes.

“The fuck?” says Keno faintly. 

“No,” says Spade. “He’s going to conduct us to Valhalla!”

Capable shakes her head. “Valhalla is a lie.”

She has their attention. She has Furiosa and Toast’s attention, too. 

“Valhalla is where the warriors go to feast and walk with the Immortan, right?” says Capable, and the Repair Boys nod automatically. They’ve known the mythology since before they could talk. “Well,” Capable continues, “if Valhalla is so great, why wasn’t Immortan Joe the first in line to get there?”

“Somebody’s got to stay behind to conduct us,” offers Keno just as Maz blurts, “He’s a full-life, of course he’s in no rush.”

“And how can you walk with him if he’s still here?”

Jammer knows this one. “We wait, is all.” But there’s doubt edging into his voice.

“Who killed the world?” Capable asks softly. “You know he’s from the Before. You know the people in the Before killed the world.”

“He couldn’t have,” Maz says, his words hitching with concern. “He _couldn’t_ have!”

“You’re on water rations,” Toast points out, “but old Joe is sitting on top of the pumps.”

“We shouldn’t become addicted to water,” Spade stammers. “We will resent its absence.”

Toast snorts. “Like you’re addicted to air? To food? Engines need fuel and air to burn, water to be cool. Humans are the same.”

“Joe controls your fuel and water, Joe controls you,” adds Capable. 

“We were breeders,” says Toast. “And you’re battle fodder. Useful to him until you aren’t, and then you’re thrown away.”

The Repair Boys are all staring at the former Wives with something akin to horror. Jammer turns to Furiosa and entreats, “Boss, did you know? How’d you know?”

Furiosa says levelly, “I was a Wife once.”

Now they’re all staring at her, realization dawning on chalk-white faces. They’re all young, young enough that they’ve never known her as anything other than the Immortan’s Imperator, but it’s rare for a woman to rise among the ranks; they must have suspected. 

Keno is the first to come around, his light of understanding glowing like the moon. “So you took the Immortan’s breeders, knowing he’d chase you and empty out the Citadel.”

Jammer is still struggling. “But where are the others? She brought back the breeders and the Immortan’s corpse, but...where’s all the War Boys?”

It’s the opening Toast has been waiting for, and the smile that plays on her lips is almost feral. “Not all the War Boys understand that Joe betrayed them, that he’s betrayed all of us,” she says. “We got through the mountains, but on the way back, we had to blow the War Rig to block the pass.”

Their leader and god may be dead, but hearing of the War Rig’s demise leaves the Repair Boys utterly stricken. They look at Furiosa in dazed wonder, as if surviving her rig’s destruction is an impossible miracle.

“The pass is still blocked,” Toast continues, “but you know they’re not giving up.” The Repair Boys nod. “It’s two weeks around the mountains, and they’re gunning for the Citadel - for us - to retake what we’ve liberated.”

“Boltcutter,” murmurs Spade. 

Keno squares his shoulders like he’s prepping for a fight. “So now what? What do you need from us, boss?”

Furiosa’s throat is suddenly tight, overwhelmingly grateful for their loyalty. “Get as many vehicles running as you can. Spread the word. It’ll be a hard fight, but you deserve better than what Immortan gave you.”

“ _Water_ ,” exclaims Jammer, like he’s just getting it. “We’ll get more water.”

“You got it, boss,” says Maz, adding, “Glad you’re back. Knew you wouldn’t traitor us.” 

“No,” says Furiosa. “Never.”


	11. Chapter 11

In the end, it’s as easy as telling them to trust her, because they _do_. She tells them that the former Wives are on her side, and just like that, the Repair Boys relax, and stop treating Toast as if she’s about to bite them. They don’t question; they don’t need to. It’s not what she expected, honestly, although she couldn’t have put a finger on it to say why. (Maybe she’s just trying not to remember punching Ace in the windpipe, and if that’s the case, she’d rather continue not remembering. The moment roils in her mind, hot and acrid with shame.) 

She has every intention of staying in the Repair Shop and starting in on the fabrication of a new arm, but as soon as she gets to her workbench, her good hand is shaking so much with fatigue that she can barely hold a screwdriver. She’s got most of the parts for a new prosthesis - she’d been mulling over some potential improvements before the run - but the last few she’s put together have been done with an existing mechanical hand, not just her naked stump. 

Maz sidles over, making a big show of pretending he’s not carrying a stool and then definitely not nudging it toward her. “Don’t be a smartass,” she tells him, gratefully sitting down, and he ducks his head to hide his grin.

“Need a hand, boss?” chirps Jammer, poking his head out from underneath the blackened chassis he’s currently rewiring. 

“That goes for you, too,” she retorts, and he rolls his creeper back under the car in one smooth motion, giggling like a child the whole way.

Capable eases onto the workbench, and wordlessly holds two pieces for Furiosa to attach together. “These are your people,” she observes.

Furiosa twists the screw in place. “You’re _all_ my people.”

She stays as long as she can, until her vision goes blurry, and the shaking isn’t something she can ignore. Having decided Toast is no longer an unknown quantity, Keno is halfway in love already, tentatively asking her questions about anything that pops into his head. Capable is more hesitant to make conversation; it’s obvious she sees Nux in every one of the Boys’ powdery white faces. 

“Hey...hey, boss?” Jammer edges over as she’s cleaning up her tools. “We can tell the others, right? About getting more water?”

She rubs her good hand in her good eye, blinking until he comes into focus. “No one owns you, Jammer,” she says quietly. “Not Joe, not me, not anyone. You say whatever you want.”

“I just…” He frowns. “They hurt you, boss. They hurt you real bad.”

He’s afraid of retaliation. She thinks of Corpus’s half-lives, of the dissent that’s certainly churning through the Citadel. If she could walk further, she’d be out among Citadel’s inhabitants - the War Boys, the Repair Boys, the Grow Crew, the mothers, the workers - taking the pulse of the place and letting them see her. “If you feel unsafe, you come find me,” Furiosa says firmly. “But remember - Joe betrayed us all. It’s a big shock. People are going to be upset, and you have to let them be angry for awhile.”

Jammer lingers. “Boss...the Mechanic didn’t come back. Who’s fixing you?” 

“Capable and Cheedo, and a mother from over the mountains, Mari.” 

He eyes her patch skeptically. “Their work is chrome?”

“Yes, their work is chrome.”

He’s unconvinced. “ _Best_ chrome?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Minus some bits,” he grumbles. “That was a real chrome arm.”

Furiosa rolls her eyes. “Get out of here,” she says, without rancor. 

The tough love seems to work, because Jammer nods, apparently reassured.

Even though the sun is still casting long shadows on the waste, by the time she gets back to the Vault, she’s staggering with exhaustion. She manages a few mouthfuls of the thick millet porridge Amy hands her before she’s nodding off with the spoon still in her hand; Cheedo gently touches her shoulder and says wouldn’t she rather fall asleep in bed than facedown in her bowl?

It’s the end of day seven.


	12. Chapter 12

She’s locked in a strange, incoherent dream about sucking mud and wheeling crows when Toast nudges her awake. “Furiosa,” she hisses. “The pumps have stopped.”

“ _Fuck_.” It’s the worst-case scenario she’s been dreading. “When? What happened?”

Toast shakes her head. “About ten minutes ago. The water just petered out. No warning, nothing.”

Furiosa is on her feet but swaying, caught between the dense fog of restless sleep and the scream of fractured ribs. She lets Toast steady her. “The people below,” she grinds out. “Riots?”

“Not yet. Most of them are still asleep, but that’s not going to last long.”

The pain crescendos to a dissonant, overwhelming shriek, and for a moment, Furiosa is sure she’s actually going to throw up. The room takes a sickening dive, and then Toast is hauling her back up onto the bed.

“Shit,” says Toast. “ _Shit_. What do you need? What can I do?”

“Help me wrap,” Furiosa chokes, drenched in sweat and shaking. “As tight as we can.”

By the time the linen strips are secured, her vision is starting to clear, but she still feels hollow and shattered, every muscle quivering. “You sure you’re okay?” Toast asks, clearly unnerved.

“I’m going to need my arm.” 

Toast nods. “I’ll have one of the Pups grab it.”

By the time they’ve padded her shoulder and belted the old prosthetic into place, a low rumbling has started to build through the rock. Furiosa flexes her metal hand, feeling the familiar bite of the leather straps into her back and neck. “Does it need more padding?” asks Capable, face pinched with worry.

Furiosa shakes her head. It’s as good as it’s going to get. She’s strapped so tightly she can barely breathe, but she’s upright and ready to move. “Toast, get your Pups. Capable, get Keno and the others. Cheedo, go talk to the mothers. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

It’s chaos outside on the ground. Lanterns flare into existence and bob like glowing insects in the darkness. The water has been flowing down to the Wretched for eight days now, and celebration has suddenly turned into a wild howl of dismay and betrayal. Furiosa stands in Joe’s skull-faced balcony and feels the helplessness from below like a physical force. 

Toast reappears, two skeleton-faced Pups trotting behind her. “We thought we’d located the power source last night,” she says, out of breath from running. “Thought the pumps were hooked up to the windmills, but so are the lights, and they’re still on.”

“It’s a mess of wires down there,” the taller of the two boys pipes up. “Everything goes everywhere.”

“Capable’s rounding up the Repair Boys,” Toast adds. “They’re heading down into the pipeworks.”

Furiosa casts around the balcony, and seizes upon the announcement system. “Does the sound system still have power?”

The second Pup dives to the ground in front of the controls, nimble fingers tracing each wire back to its source. “Yeah. It’s good.”

“What’s your name?”

“Spark,” the Pup says immediately.

Furiosa picks up the microphone, trying to remember how she’d seen Joe hold it when he addressed the crowd. “Spark, can you turn this on?”

He pushes a few buttons and flicks a switch. “Should be live now.”

She clears her throat, and the sound echoes hugely throughout the waste, reverberating between the Citadel’s sheer cliffs. “This is Furiosa,” she says, and her words come out stern and strong, rippling through the speakers. “We are experiencing an unknown mechanical failure. We are working to get the water flowing again as soon as possible. Stay calm, and know this: the water will flow again.”

Spark is turning off the microphone, but Furiosa’s already four steps away, headed out the door. “Get Dag and the mothers together, the Grow Crew, everyone you can,” she says. “Drain the whole system. I want to reserve every drop of water still in those pipes. Someone take a tally of what we have. We’re rationing it immediately.”

“Got it,” says Toast tersely. 

Capable, Keno and Jammer meet her by the lettuce bay. “I’ve never serviced no pump,” Jammer moans. “It’s never broke before!”

“You fixed the water pump on the War Rig a hundred times,” Furiosa points out. “This will be the same.”  


“You think?”

Before she can react, Keno smacks the back of Jammer’s head. “The fuck. It’s like you’re still a Pup.”

“Sorry, sorry! I just - I got it. We’re good, boss.”

Furiosa shakes her head and rolls her shoulder to settle the prosthesis into a better position. Flicking on her flashlight, she leads them into the pipeworks.


	13. Chapter 13

“Do we actually know where the pumps are?” asks Capable. They’ve gone down what feels like kilometers of narrow passageways, following progressively thicker pipes into the bowels of the Citadel. “What if we’re in the wrong tower?”

“We’re not,” says Furiosa grimly. “The biggest pipes all stem from here. Toast and the Pups are sure it’s down here somewhere.”

The air gets cooler as they descend, the walls slick with condensation. Water pools in ruts on the ground, seeping into their boots and trousers. There are a few wires running on the ceiling, but the only light comes from Furiosa’s crank flashlight and Jammer’s handheld oil lamp.

“I don’t remember the pumps ever failing,” Capable says quietly. 

“They haven’t.” At least, not in her memory, unless Joe hushed it up somehow, which wasn’t unlikely. Furiosa peers around the corner of an intersection and chooses left, following the hallway down. She can’t shake the sense that she’s somehow responsible for this, that if she’d just gone and driven to Gastown like she was expected to, the pumps might still be chugging along. She knows the tanker of her War Rig had four separate chambers: one for guzzoline, one for milk, one for water and one for produce. The fuel pod on the back held 3000 gallons; with the space in the tanker and the Rig’s own tanks, she could haul close to 8000 gallons. Enough for a few weeks, at least. 

“Keno, do you know how often the vehicles refuel?” She’d hoarded guzz for months, siphoning off a few gallons here and there to ensure she’d have enough to trade the Rock Riders for safe passage. 

The Repair Boy shrugs. “When they need to. Only becomes an issue when there’s a War Party.”

“But how much?” she presses. 

He shrugs again. “War Boys do the hookups. It all goes in the pipes.”

Furiosa grunts in frustration. “There’s got to be a holding tank somewhere.” The Citadel was ten days overdue for the fuel she would have delivered that day. They _had_ to have a backup. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She scrubs her good hand against her good eye. 

“You didn’t do this,” Capable tells her softly. “This isn’t your fault.”

It’s hard not to think of Angharad, hard not to think that Furiosa’s actions toward her liberation had also lead to her death. 

“ _Don’t_ ,” Capable warns, as if reading her thoughts. Her eyes flash like the mirrors on Valkyrie’s tower. “Don’t you dare go down that path.”

Furiosa turns away, and keeps walking down the hall. 

 

****

 

The halls narrow, corners becoming softer and more rounded, until they can only be properly called tunnels. Capable has a stick of chalk in her hand, carefully marking each corner they take so they can eventually find their way out. It’s pitch black except for the flick of the oil lamp and the blurry lens of the cranklight. Small insects scatter from their passage, pinpricks darting and buzzing through the dark. 

The air is thick with water. Furiosa can feel it in her mouth, in her lungs. In the thousands of days she’s been at the Citadel, she’d forgotten everything but dust, and humidity is at once suffocating and welcome. It sinks into her skin, stirring memories like long-dormant seeds. 

She didn’t ask about the other Vuvalini, about Eleanor or Tamar, about Valkyrie. She’s seen only Amy and Mari since the ascent on the lift (and even then, she’d been so out of it she doesn’t even remember Max leaving, even though the others said she’d nodded to him goodbye). She’s driven the waste long enough to know better than to pretend. You cut your losses, you keep moving. 

Max had said hope was a mistake, and oh, how she wants to believe he’s wrong, but hope takes strength, and she feels pulverized. Ace, Angharad, Nux, the others… She aches from the very core of her bones, and even though she wants very much to just lie down and bleed out, she has to keep moving. This world they’re building is constructed on a foundation of her own betrayals, both those she’s dealt and those dealt to her, and Furiosa has a duty to protect and support the women of the new Citadel. 

“You’re really shiny,” Jammer blurts out, dancing away from Capable as if speaking to her forfeits his right to walk within an arms-length of her. “Sorry. Sorry. Just needed to say.”

“You’re such a fucking Pup sometimes,” sighs Keno. 

Capable is silent for awhile, and Furiosa knows she’s remembering, hurting. “Did you know Nux?” she finally asks. 

“Nux!” The grin is evident in his voice. “Nux can _drive_.”

“He saved us,” Capable says. Her words are steady, solid as the rock beneath them. “He was driving the War Rig.”

“That is _so chrome_ ,” Jammer breathes. 

In the black, Furiosa feels Capable’s fingers against her human hand, squeezing tight. “He thought I was shiny, too,” she says, and it’s so quiet it’s almost lost in their footsteps. 

 

****

 

The pipes they’re following abruptly disappear into a wall, and they’re forced to backtrack up a steep incline, smudging out previous chalk marks. 

“I worked on a car once,” Keno muses breathlessly, “where you had to lift out the fucking engine to get to the auxiliary fuel lines. Some hacked-up piece of Buzzard shit. Ran like a three-legged camel, but it was a trophy, so it _had_ to be kept up.”

Jammer snickers. “Heh. Three-legged camel.”

“Are you comparing the lifeblood of our home to a bad salvage?” Capable asks. 

Keno’s lantern bobs. “I’m just saying, they could have made an access hatch.”

“Or a map.”

“There’s a thought.”

Furiosa’s cranklight, which has been progressively dimming, finally flickers out. She stops, head buzzing from the climb, and winds the crank, the effort tugging aching muscles in her shoulders. Now that the situation’s initial adrenalin has worn off, the exhaustion is seeping in like water. Her chest is bound so tightly every breath feels trapped in her throat, her heart thundering in her ears.

About that time, Jammer’s oil lamp shudders out as well, eliciting a yelp from Capable. The darkness is complete, any notion of ground or walls dissolving into black.

Furiosa hits the ground.


	14. Chapter 14

The next thing she knows, someone’s stripping her naked. There’s a raw, animal spurt of panic, and she want to hit - but her ribs, she is very aware of her ribs, of the tightness and ache slicing down her side. Her instinct is to swing up with her prosthetic, but her stump is too light - where the hell is she that someone can attack and she didn’t sleep with her prosthetic?

“Easy, easy.” Capable’s voice, crooning. “You’re safe. It’s all right.”

Furiosa blinks. 

There’s pale rock above her, bathed in the orange glow of the oil lamp and the white flare of the cranklight. She pushes herself up slowly, Capable’s hands firmly guiding her.

The Repair Boys are kneeling a few feet away. Jammer’s eyes are huge, and he’s a queasy shade of green beneath his pale chalk. 

“Was it Toast or Dag?” Capable asks, frowning. 

“What?”

“Dag was up on the terrace,” she continues, ostensibly to herself, but Furiosa gets the feeling the commentary has a very specific target. “So it must have been Toast. It certainly wasn’t _me_ , because Cheedo and Mari _specifically_ told me _not_ to help you bind your ribs.”

“I have work to do,” retorts Furiosa. “I’m not going to lie in bed-”

“-and let others help you? Of course not,” Capable shoots back. “That would be too sensible. Instead, you wrap yourself so tightly you _pass out_ -”

“I _didn’t_ -”

“What if we were fighting off a War Party?” She’s not yelling, but there’s no mistaking the hard edge of anger in her voice. She crosses her arms, spots of color high in her cheeks. “What if you were _driving_?”

Jammer looks like he’s forgotten how to breathe, and Keno would rather be _anywhere_ else. 

“I _was_ driving,” Furiosa snaps. She fists her good hand to keep it from shaking, tries not to feel the smooth hilt of the knife on her palm or the slick of her own blood. Her body remembers what her brain is still piecing together, and ice-white shock washes over her, lungs shuddering with the memory of suffocation. She claws her way back to reality, to the solid ground beneath her, to Capable’s tight, furious expression. 

“Max _stabbed_ you!” It comes out like a punctured tire, like a punctured lung, quick and harsh and thick with desperation. “You couldn’t breathe, you were dying in front of us, and he _stabbed you_. We thought he was ending you, but he made you breathe again.”

“By the vee eight,” whispers Keno. 

“That’s not possible,” Furiosa says, her mind skipping frantically. “You can’t stab someone and make them live.” It would be like shooting them and bringing them back to life, taking an anti-seed and watching it bloom into green.

Capable shakes her head. “He _did_. He knew exactly what to do to make you breathe, and he gave you his blood-” Her voice hitches upward.

Furiosa sinks back down, her human hand cupping the hard line of stitches at the bottom of her ribcage. The bellows of her lungs swell with each breath, the tight cage of bones rising and falling beneath her fingers. She’s never thought of her body as fragile, even during the worst moments after the loss of her arm; even then she was still whole - imperfect, disabled, angry, but her core was still strong. Since coming back, she’s felt...if not fragile, then at least weak. Tenuous. She is no stranger to death and violence, but it’s something that’s been external, something that she did to others. Katie made sure her young charge could kill a man ten different ways before his body knew he was dead, but it only took one moment, one knife, to make Furiosa understand exactly how easy it is to die. 

She doesn’t believe in life debts. The harsh calculus of the desert makes it impossible to keep an accurate tally. That was why she’d given Max the ignition sequence. He knew - keenly - that the ultimate goal is survival, and if his own was bound up in the survival of others, he’d do whatever it took to get them all through. That was also why he’d left. But at that point, Joe was dead, and they’d been on their way back to the Citadel, the canyon blown closed behind them; Max hadn’t needed to save Furiosa, and yet he had.

“He gave you his name,” Capable entreats, and out of everything, that is the single moment that is the most mysterious, the most unsettling, a moment she doesn’t remember but the girls all insist happened. 

He’d let her use his shoulder for a rifle mount. She hadn’t needed to know his name. 

“Who is...Max?” Jammer whispers the name, as if he’s afraid to summon the man who can thwart death. 

“Nux’s blood bag,” says Capable. “Our friend.”

A fierce ache wells in her chest that has nothing to do with her injuries, and it’s more than Furiosa can bear. She pushes herself back up, swallowing against the pain, and staggers to her feet. Capable’s stripped off her prosthesis and the wraps in her rush to restore Furiosa to consciousness, and as badly as she wants the hard pressure holding her tight, Capable’s watching her with the intensity of a goanna. Instead, she adjusts her shirt, hefting the prosthesis and buckling it - tightly - over the top. The leather straps are soft and supple from years of use, but the support is adequate for now. 

“If he’s your friend, where is he now?” Keno asks, skeptical. The Citadel has water, food, shelter - everyone wanted to be here. Of course it doesn’t make sense to the Repair Boys that someone who is welcome would go back into the waste.

“Enough chatter,” says Furiosa, gritting her teeth. “We keep moving.”


	15. Chapter 15

The Rock Riders largely control the mountains, but this is the eastern extent of their range and they’re absent, likely clustered around the ruins of the pass and scavenging what they can from the wrecks in the canyon. He’d normally stay out on the flat where the claustrophobia doesn’t feel so overwhelming, but there’s a haze of dust on the valley horizon that tugs at the back of his brain. 

_Help us, Max._

_Why can’t you help us?_

It could be a herd of stampeding camels - he’s seen them here before, seeking out the moisture beneath the sand - but when he takes the bike up a rise and parks at the crest, Glory appears exasperated beside him, hands on her hips and eyes lit with fire. _What are you_ doing _, Max?_

He follows the line of the valley rim with his binoculars, and immediately recognizes the distant shapes. 

They are definitely not camels. 

Furiosa’s creaking breath comes hard in his ears _why is she making that sound_ and his hands are slick on the knife _who killed the world_ is it blood or just sweat _why can’t you help us you were supposed to help us -_

“MAX.” 

He whirls, pistol drawn and heart thundering, but there’s no one, just the echo of Glory’s voice in his skull. A gust of wind sends a lizard skittering into the scrub, the hiss of sand a calming susurrus for his overtaxed nerves. The gasping breath has been his own. 

When he’s stopped shaking, he forces himself to raise the binoculars again. 

He counts fifteen vehicles and at least two bikes, but they’re making no attempt at stealth, and the cloud of dust from their passage is thick in the setting sun. They’re at least ten miles away, heading west in a line that leaves absolutely no doubt as to their destination. The massive speaker rig is gone, only one of the tankers is left, and the remaining vehicles have been selected for speed and endurance, but it’s obviously the remnants of a three-part armada. He’s lost all sense of time out here in the desert, but he’d bet his last drop of water that the men inside have been driving non-stop since the pass, stopping only to consolidate fuel. 

_Shit. Shit shit shitshitshit shit._ Frustration wells up like the urge to vomit and he has to scrub at his hair and stamp his feet and growl incoherently at the universe. 

Glory stands unimpressed, waiting for him to finish. 

When he’s expelled enough energy to focus again, she’s staring at him impatiently. The voices ripple through his head like echoes in a cistern: 

_Help us, Max_

_Why won’t you help us?_

_Where are you going?_

She swings her arm like she’s throwing a rock, and his muscles react before his brain even registers the action, contracting hard and sending him sprawling into the dirt. When he recovers, she’s gone. There’s only the sound of the wind whistling over the tops of the peppercress. 

 

****

He takes stock of his supplies. He has a bike (sufficient) with two-thirds a tank of gas, two auxiliary tanks (full), two water cans (full and three-quarters full, respectively), his pistol (15 shots), a backup pistol (9 shots), his rifle (12 shots), four grenades, seven knives of various sizes and a decent length of rope. 

Even if he’s creative - and Max is very creative - it’s nowhere near enough to take down a war party hellbent on revenge. 

His bike is too noisy to risk getting closer. His only option is to turn around and try to beat them back to Citadel. Furiosa must know they’re coming, and of course she’ll be rallying her troops, but…

He hops back on the bike and cranks the throttle, sending a shower of gravel as he spins toward the west. He can’t stop the convoy, but he can at least provide early warning. It’ll give the women a fighting chance. 

 

****

The service station is exactly as he’d left it. There are some new tire tracks, but they circle around the half-collapsed island, dusty footprints ringing the access lid to the underground tanks. 

Despite being picked clean, it’s still a plum target. Exactly the sort of place a long-distance war party would investigate, even. They’ll have expended most of their supplies getting this far, and it’s not far out of their way. 

He does a quick sweep of the area, decides it's safe enough, and gets to work.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been trying to keep the chapters around 1000 words, because that feels like a nice, manageable size, but this got longer and I couldn't handle leaving you guys with another cliffhanger. So. 
> 
> And AKSJDFLKJASDFKJ THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the comments and kudos; your feedback and support make this crazy project muchmuchmuch less daunting. Every chapter is my heartfelt love note to this fandom.

If feels like they’ve been walking in circles for years, every step another stabbing breath through Furiosa’s center, when the tunnel suddenly yawns open, the walls and ceiling rising into darkness. Jammer holds his oil lamp up high, Furiosa’s cranklight bouncing around the room. It’s a huge natural cavern in the rock, and out of the far wall, two pipes, each the diameter of her body, take a graceful dive into the black lake below.

“Vee _eight_ ,” breathes Jammer. 

It’s more water than she’s seen since leaving the Green Place, and even though it’s pitch black outside the flickering ring of the oil lamp, Furiosa aches to dive in, to feel the surface close above her, floating weightless and clean. 

This is the Citadel’s, theirs, hers. The Green Place may be ruined and sour, but this bottomless pool will supply them for years. A thick cord of tension she didn’t know she was carrying starts to come unbolted, spooling out with the knowledge that the water exists, that they haven’t run out, that Joe’s numbers weren’t wrong. 

Capable clutches her human hand and hums in awe. 

“Boss, what’s that?” Keno is pointing across the aquifer, to the dark shadows on the opposite wall. Furiosa turns the cranklight toward them, revealing squat metal cylinders crouching above the pipes. 

“Those have to be the pumps.” The water is almost completely still, its surface broken only by the occasion drip from above. 

Jammer looks aghast. “How do we get out there?” The distance is twice the length of the War Rig, maybe more, the surrounding walls sheer and slick. 

The Repair Boys are Citadel denizens, born to the Wretched and raised in the desert. Furiosa knows how they live; the most water they’ve ever seen has been in an engine coolant system. Capable is scowling. “Maybe it’s shallow enough for us to wade,” she hedges. 

Furiosa gingerly bends and selects several jagged pebbles from the ground. She means to lob the first one, but it ends up being the same motion used for skipping, the hitting the surface with a dull plop. She tries to catch the stone’s path with her cranklight, and after the third stone, she’s confident that it’s impossible to tell how far down the bottom is. The water is crystal clear and the bottom of the pool slopes down into black a few feet from the edge. 

Keno peers at the tiny waves lapping at the worn stone. “It, uh, looks like it drops off.”

“Maybe there used to be a boat,” suggests Capable. “Or a catwalk?”

“Well, there isn’t one now.” Somewhere far above them, the Wretched are pounding at the rocks, and in the distance, the War Boys are roaring toward the Citadel with vengeance in their hearts and chrome on their lips. She needs to get the pumps working again, so she reaches for the buckles on her prosthesis. 

Capable’s eyes go wide. “Oh no. Absolutely not!”

Furiosa raises an eyebrow, dropping the prosthesis to the ground and moving on to her shirt. “Can _you_ swim?”

“Swim?” Jammer says faintly. “What’s ‘swim’?”

“We’ll go back up to the surface and find someone who _can_ ,” announces Capable firmly. 

But who else is there? The Vuvalini? Kicking off her boots, Furiosa shucks off her trousers. Keno and Jammer are staring at her with varying degrees of horror, but it has nothing to do with nudity. She’s suddenly very aware of the angry red gashes on her shoulder, the half-healed puckers on her abdomen from where she’s been stabbed. The violence of her life is written in her skin as certainly as the world’s history was written on Miss Giddy, from the raised edges of road rash to the pale striations of failed maternity. 

“Furiosa, _no_.” Capable wrings her hands. “Look, it’s - it’s too dangerous. You could die, you could-”

“I was born in the water,” Furiosa snaps, and that shuts everyone up. 

She moves to the edge and eases her feet into the aquifer. It’s cold, not at all like the sun-warmed pools she remembers from her childhood. Taking a breath that tugs at her ribs, her skin pimpling from anticipation, she steps forward and lets the water swallow her whole. 

The temperature is a shock, but oh, Mothers, it feels _lovely_. She exhales a lacy trail of bubbles, letting gravity pull her down into the black. The currents of her dive swirl around her, ghostly fingers on her legs and shoulders, and for a brief moment, she’s fifteen, Valkyrie’s sleek and sun-browned limbs entangled in her own. 

When her lungs start to ache with hunger, she kicks once, and floats to the surface, the pain in her ribs slowly numbed by the chill. It’s the best thing she’s ever felt. 

Capable shrieks when she breaks the surface, Keno and Jammer toeing the edge of the water in anxiety. “FURIOSA I SWEAR-”

She moves her arms slowly, the minimal effort to stay buoyant. It’s harder than she remembers, but she’s minus one hand, so of course she’s going to have to compensate a little. She briefly considers reattaching her prosthesis, but quickly rejects the idea; it’s too heavy and awkward, it’ll slow her down. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?” There’s a hysterical hitch in Capable’s voice. 

Furiosa considers. She still hurts, but the cold is blissfully numbing, and it’s easier to breathe than it has been in days. Her body remembers how to float, how to move, as if it hasn’t been seven thousand days since she was last weightless and free. The is water streaming down her face, in her ears and trickling down her neck. Her eyes are burning, but it has nothing to do with the aquifer. (It has everything to do with the aquifer.)

“Keno,” she says, giving herself a mental shake, “what tools did you bring?”

He starts, broken from a trance, and digs through his voluminous pockets, pawing at his tool belt. “Pretty much everything that wasn’t too heavy to carry,” he says. 

“Do you have any rope? Cord? Wire?” 

Pieces are produced, from his pockets and Jammer’s and the pouches Capable has taken to wearing at her waist. It’s all scavenged lengths, the longest barely taller than a man. Even put together, it won’t span the distance. She’d thought maybe she could string enough together to make a tow rope of sorts, but she’ll have swim with whatever tools she needs. 

The distance hadn’t looked too difficult before, but it’s starting to seem a little daunting, especially if she needs to make multiple trips. She can’t carry all of Keno’s tools, and she won’t know what she needs until she takes the things apart. She opts for a wrench and a screwdriver, wedging them at her hip through the hem of her undershorts. “Capable, I need you to hold the cranklight and spot what I’m working on. Jammer, under no circumstances is that oil to come close to the water, understand? Even a drop will contaminate the entire aquifer.”

He frowns - he’s been siphoning guzzoline since he was a pup, always catching a drop or more, and he’s still alive, right? - but he doesn’t argue. Very carefully, he puts the lantern by the tunnel entrance, turning up the flame so it bathes the cavern in tenuous, flickering light. 

“Be _careful_ ,” Capable entreats. 

Furiosa pushes off from the edge of the pool, taking easy, languid strokes. Memories of the Green Place rise from her muscles, her stump feeling awkward and alien for the first time in years. She can feel the current through her missing fingers, the deep cramping ache of her phantom limb radiating up her arm. 

When she makes it to the edge of the big pipe, she stops to float for a few moments, regaining her breath. Her tools are still secure. She looks back, but can’t see more than three shadows around the bright halo of the flashlight. 

“Still okay?” Capable calls out.

Furiosa gives her a thumbs-up. “Still okay.” She rolls on her back and does a leisurely kick along the edge of the pipe, her good hand up behind her head to ease her collision with the edge of the aquifer. 

She hoists herself up next to the pumps and sits a moment with her hand on her ribs, catching her breath and rolling the kinks out of her neck. Out of the water, the air is chilly and she resolves to work as fast as she can; she can tell already that shivering is going to _hurt_. 

“Boss?” Keno calls. 

“Still here.” Furiosa sets her tools down and stiffly kneels beside the first pump. “Capable, move three feet to your left with the light.”

“How’s that?”

“Better.” 

The motor housings look ancient, the sort of technology that was old even Before, and Furiosa is suddenly sick with the thought that the pumps are too old to even fix. She wrestles with the housing bolts, mind furiously speeding ahead. Motors this size go into vehicles, but there aren’t so many of _those_ lying around either. She’ll have to sacrifice mobility and defense for water, but she’ll have no choice. Without water, there’s nothing worth defending. 

The light flickers out and she’s bathed in sudden darkness. She hears Capable start to crank frantically. “Shit, I’m sorry! Just a second!”

“I’m still here.” The oil lamp is barely bright enough to throw shadows this far, but as her good eye adjusts, Furiosa notices that the black behind the pumps is too deep and smooth to be natural. Carefully tucking her tools back next to her hip, she eases forward, letting her human hand guide her. She sinks into the shadow, groping for any edges, until her fingers brush metal. 

It’s a rung, and there are others above and below. It’s an access ladder. She can’t see how far up it goes, but given their roundabout journey to the pumps in the first place, it makes perfect sense that there’s a more direct route. She’s just annoyed none of the Pups found it first. 

Behind her, the flashlight beam flickers back on, swinging around the pumps. “Furiosa?” Capable calls, and then a little more frantically, “Furiosa!”

“I think there’s an access hatch.” Her words bounce back at her behind the pumps. 

“What? Where are you? Are you all right?”

Furiosa pops her head over the top of the pump and is immediately blinded. “I’m right here!” She points to the wall. “There’s an access hatch over here, but I can’t see where it goes.”

“Where was that earlier?” Capable gripes. 

With the light back in place, she can get back to the power housing. There’s enough corrosion on the bolts that it’s slow going, but one by one, they slip free. Despite how bad the housing looks, the motor underneath looks well-maintained, so much so that she can’t tell how it could have failed. The second one is exactly the same. The power is all connected, but there definitely isn’t any juice; she even risks tapping a finger on the leads to make sure. 

“Keno?” she calls out. 

“Yeah, boss?”

“Did you talk to Toast’s pups about the electrical lines?”

“Yeah, boss. Pups were sure the windmills were the source.”

“Do you know of any alternate power sources?”

Across the aquifer, she hears him hum a bit, thinking. “We got a few generators around, but they’re for emergencies. As far as I know, the windmills run the lights, and they’re always blowing.”

“Who takes care of the windmills?”

“Name of Cronut. Older Boy, doesn’t talk.”

It’s not a name she recognizes, until Jammer adds, “He trails Imperator Capto pretty exclusive.”

Now she knows. She’d never known the War Boy’s name; he never spoke except to whisper in Capto’s ear, and since she and Capto were never exactly on friendly terms, she’d had no reason to interact with him. Cronut was to Capto what Ace had been to her - a steady right hand. “And when everyone left, he went with Capto?”

“Haven’t seen him, so yeah, probably.”

Furiosa scrubs her good hand over her good eye. She’s drying off, and the air pricks her skin like a thousand tiny gnats. The pumps aren’t broken - they’re just not receiving power. It’s good news and bad news, especially since the Pups were adamant that the windmills were working. There’s power, but it’s not -

Oh. 

_Oh_.

She feels utterly stupid. 

“Hey, boss?”

“Yeah?”

“I think there’s a ledge here.” Jammer’s voice floats across the water. “It looks like maybe we can get across.”

She looks up, and sees he’s standing up to his ankles on the far edge of the wall, maybe thirty feet from her. “Are you sure?”

He takes another couple of shuffling steps. “It’s narrow, but yeah, yeah, I think we can.” He’s practically trembling with the excitement of it, of standing in an actual body of water. 

“Good. I could use another set of eyes on this.”

“Sure thing, boss.” 

“Want me to bring the light over?” Capable asks.

“Yes,” and Furiosa adds, “and my clothes, too, thanks.”

As the two others start to gingerly make their way across, she turns back to the pumps. Joe kept his breeders behind a vault door, his vehicles lifted high above the desert. It only made sense that he’d protect his greatest asset the same way Furiosa had protected hers. 

“Killswitch,” she murmurs. “ _Fuck._ ” She starts feeling around the motor housings, checking for a button or trigger that maybe she’s missed, although she’s pretty sure it’s not there. Joe wasn’t as mobile in his latter years as he’d been in his youth, and he’d prefer the killswitch close, accessible. 

There’s a brief splash, and when Furiosa jerks around, it’s only Capable and Keno pressed against the wall. 

“JAMMER!” Keno’s howl is feral, and the only thing that prevents him from diving in after is Capable wrenching him hard back against the wall. 

The cranklight beam frantically bounces around the room, coming to rest on the agitated water when Jammer surfaces, frantically tries to grab at the slick ledge, and then slips back under. Capable and Keno are both screaming, sharp reverberations echoing off the rock. 

Furiosa is launching into the water before her body even registers the dual traumas of the such a deep breath and the immediate impact of the water. She kicks hard into the black, utterly blind and relying on her trajectory to carry her in the right direction. 

She can hear the muted din above the water, and the wild splashing somewhere ahead. She kicks and kicks, pulling hard with her good arm to compensate for her stump. 

Her hand connects with something soft, and she’s grabbing at Jammer’s body, trying to get purchase. He’s slippery, flailing with panic, an underwater dervish of pistoning arms and legs. She takes a boot to the stomach and sees stars, what feels like half the pool rushing into her throat. 

She kicks up, coughing and trying to get enough air so she can go back under. Capable is screaming at her, the flashlight beam shaking, but it’s a sonic blur, all the sounds muddled together. Still sputtering, she sucks in another lungful of air and dives back down. 

She can’t grab him and swim at the same time. He’s too slick, too heavy, and she needs two hands where she only has one. 

She surfaces again, gulping and heading back down. Her ribs are a knifing, twisting pain, but Jammer’s still struggling, still sinking, and she is _not_ going to lose him. 

He’s got half the Repair Shop in his pockets, his boots heavy and made for stomping accelerators. She tries grabbing at his waist, tries looping her stump under his shoulder, but it’s still too much weight. They’re sinking into the black, his wet clothes dragging them both down.

She’s got one eye and one arm, it’s pitch black, and he’s just a kid who slipped when he was trying to help. 

Furiosa screams but only bubbles come out. 

One more desperate gasp at the surface, one more moment where she grits her teeth and pushes hard against the buzzing in her head. She’s heading back down, muscles aching from the effort and white-hot pain constricting her lungs. 

Somehow in her blind groping, she connects with the back of his pants, and _fuck_ , she’s never been so glad of someone whose shoes are constantly half-untied.

He’s not moving when she pushes him up next to the pumps, and he stays still as she clings to the edge of the rock with shaking arms, coughing and trying to pull herself up next to him. 

Keno and Capable are screaming at her, slowly trying to make their way across on the ledge, their words lost in the drone in her ears.

She hauls herself up next to Jammer, breath rattling in her throat as she gives him a hard shove. He lolls onto his back, water dribbling from his slack mouth. 

She'd punched Ace in the throat. She consigned a dozen of her most trusted War Boys to the fury of a dust storm, and even though dying historic is what they’d been raised to strive for, the taste of it was acid on her tongue. 

The Vuvalini knew about water. They knew its hazards the way the War Boys learned the hazards of the road, and they’d trained their daughters in everything they knew. The memory comes back like the quick snap of a spark plug, and then she’s straddling Jammer’s chest, bracing her good arm with her stump and pushing hard at his sternum. She can’t remember how many pumps, so she goes with twenty because more makes her elbow buckle. She presses her mouth against his, pushing what little air she has into his lungs before pounding harder on his chest.

Her vision is tunneling, and just when she’s starting to lose feeling in her hands, he twitches, and then half the aquifer comes flooding out. She pushes his head to the side, letting him vomit, every muscle in her body shaking with exhaustion. 

His eyes flutter open. “Boss…”

Furiosa leans in. 

“...I lied. I don’t want more water.”

“ _Jammer._ ” It comes out half a laugh, half a sob, all breathless croak. The relief is so strong she collapses down next to him. They’re both lying there, panting and coughing, every breath knifing hard into her ribs. 

“Jammer? Jammer!” Keno’s voice echoes across the water, shrill with panic. “Jammer, you with us?”

“Yeah.” He coughs and spits. “I’m here.”

“ _You fucking pup_ ,” the other Repair Boy yells. “You wait until I get over there, I’m going to fucking pound you so hard you’ll wish your half-life was a quarter! I’m going to take your fucking guts and tie them round your neck! I’m going to throw you off the edge of the lift and let the Wretched tear you apart and then I’ll tie the pieces to a fucking rig and drag you down to Gastown and back until there’s not a fucking bit of you left! Fucking pup, Jammer, you _fucking_ pup!” His words are muffled and thick, like he’s pressing his face against the wall to keep from crying. 

“Sorry,” Jammer calls out, grinning and sniffling a little. “I’m so sorry. I’m okay. I’m so sorry.”

“Fucking pup!” 

She passes out for a while, and the next thing she knows, Capable is wrapping her in her shirt, the cranklight clenched between her teeth while she checks Furiosa over for damage. Keno has Jammer in a death grip, rocking back and forth while keening, “Fucking pup, you fucking stupid pup,” while Jammer repeats, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Furiosa gestures vaguely to the pumps. “Killswitch,” she rasps. 

Capable gives her a long, hard look, and then bursts into hysterical tears.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update!! You're all so lovely with your kudos and comments, and I just want to get you chapters as fast as I can. 
> 
> 2\. I'm not a medical professional, just an amateur chemist with an unfortunate affinity for Dr. Google. Any medical errors are mine.

Capable’s moment of hysterics is like a summer storm, a brief downpour of emotion that’s over as quickly as it begins. She wipes her face and straightens her shoulders, oblivious to the alarmed expressions on the Repair Boys. “Well. Now what?”

“Killswitch,” Furiosa repeats. It feels like the aquifer is still filling her lungs, thick and dense. She coughs painfully, moisture rattling up from the bottom of her ribs. “Find it. Disable it.”

Jammer is starting to shiver, his skin going mottled and purple beneath residual clumps of white powder. He’s eyeing the water with the extreme wariness, like a bilby who’s just narrowly escaped the hawk still circling above. 

“You said there was a ladder,” Keno interjects. 

Capable shines the cranklight into the crawlspace behind the pumps. “Where does it go?”

“Up,” Furiosa offers. It’s all she could tell. The thought of even moving, much less climbing, is suddenly so daunting that she thinks if she had any energy left at all she’d just vomit. 

Capable goes watery-eyed again, but swallows it back. She starts winding the cranklight, a determined set to her jaw. “At least it’ll be more direct than walking.”  


“We hope,” says Keno. 

There’s a hard buzz at the back of Furiosa’s skull, pushing forward into her eyeballs like a swarm of vicious biting flies. Coughing makes it worse.

Keno is checking over the pumps, making sure Furiosa didn’t miss anything, and then carefully securing the drive housings. “These are chrome,” he says enviously. “Real high quality.”

“No power,” Furiosa rasps.

He nods. “Exactly.”

Capable shines the cranklight up the ladder shaft. “It looks like it goes straight up. Could even go all the way to the surface.”

Jammer pushes himself to his feet, dancing a little in an effort to get warm. “Let’s go!”

Capable’s hands are under Furiosa’s arms, guiding her up. “Think you can make it?” she asks quietly. 

_No._ “Yes.” 

Jammer pauses at the bottom of the ladder, glancing back across the aquifer at the oil lantern, still flickering by the tunnel entrance. “Do we n-need that?” His teeth are chattering. 

“It’ll have to stay here,” Capable says. “None of us are going back to get it.”

The Repair Boy looks unaccountably relieved, and fairly _darts_ up the ladder. 

Sometime after pulling Jammer out of the water, Furiosa’s body has stopped responding to commands. She lets Capable haul her upright, and sways with the effort of standing. The room already feels like it’s spinning, and the flickering shadows of the lantern with her monocular vision definitely aren’t helping. Gritting her teeth, she tries to attach her prosthesis, useless fingers fumbling with the buckles. Capable steps in, deftly securing the straps in place. 

“Boss, you okay?” Keno asks. 

She nods once, absently, bundled in fog and sand. Her head is connected to her body only by a tenuous thread. Their voices are very far away. 

“Stay behind her,” she hears Capable murmur. “I don’t know that I can catch her if she falls.”

Keno nods gravely. 

Furiosa thinks about protesting, but she hasn’t even started to climb and her arms are already shaking. 

Capable squeezes her shoulder. “We’ve got you.”

 

****

 

Climbing puts her in a fugue state. Capable’s light bobs distantly overhead, Jammer keeping a manic stream-of-consciousness commentary that is definitely a reaction to almost drowning. Furiosa’s muscles are burning, her lungs too small and too tight in a way that coughing can’t relieve. The pain in her ribs is smothering, accompanied by a nauseous bone-on-bone grind that radiates up through the roots of her molars. Her prosthetic straps, tight as they are, offer no relief. 

“Furiosa?” Capable’s voice floats back down the shaft. “Still with us?”

Talking is not a possibility. Even listening requires her to surface above the fog, and she can’t surface, she can’t surface above anything. She’s mired deep in quicksand, her brain wiped clean. She’s only an engine, steel and guzzoline, her arms and legs pistons that ceaselessly move her up the rungs. The only point of her existence is to turn energy into motion. She has been climbing forever, will be climbing forever. Maybe she’s actually dead, and this is her brain misfiring, stuck in a loop of memory as dying neurons spark at random. 

“She’s here,” Keno calls up. 

“We’re almost there,” says Capable. “It looks like there’s a hatch up ahead.”

Furiosa climbs. 

 

****

 

Then, there’s blinding light, soaking, stabbing, spearing, and she can’t stop moving, can’t tell her body that it’s time to relax. Strong arms are pulling her from the access shaft like a midwife pulling the infant from the birth channel. It’s too bright, she’s too cold, she can’t breathe, and then Capable is wrapping her tightly in a blanket while she shivers and spasms, locked in her head and struggling to come out.

“Furiosa,” Capable murmurs, barely audible above the roar in her ears, “stay with us.”

She wakes up suddenly, and for a second it feels like she’s back underwater, the world spinning and Jammer’s boot connecting hard with her gut. A splitting headache blooms at the base of her skull.

“There she is,” says Mari. She’s kneeling, a fluid pouch draped on her shoulder; the IV line runs to Furiosa’s elbow. 

“Killswitch,” Furiosa manages. 

“Capable told us,” says Toast, from her blind side. “I’ve got everyone who knows anything running the electrical lines.”

“Jammer?” He’d been so cold, chattering teeth and mottled skin. 

“Cheedo’s with him,” Mari says. There are deep creases in the skin around her mouth. “Boy needs a new shirt and a hot meal, but he’ll be fine. You, on the other hand-”

“Kill,” says Furiosa, interrupted by a rib-breaking cough. “Switch.”

“I told you, we’re looking for it.” Toast looks at Mari. “She’s still really out of it.”

“Hypogycemic shock,” the Vuvalini mutters, peering down at Furiosa’s good eye, strong fingers gentle near her eyelid. “Not enough calories, not enough rest, too much effort. The swim probably wasn’t the best idea, either.”

“Shit.” Toast scrubs her hair. “What do we do?”

Mari shrugs one shoulder, indicating the fluid bag. “This is a solution of sugar and saline. It will get her back on her feet, but she was already a high risk for pneumonia.” She frowns. “In the time Before, we had antibiotics, things to fight infection. I have some herbal remedies I can prepare, but in the meantime, she needs food and sleep.” 

Furiosa is only half listening. The yellow stone of the ceiling is painted with steering wheels in black and white, each one a grinning death’s head at its center. She’d kept the War Rig’s killswitch right beneath her own steering wheel, next to the gear shift, hidden in plain sight. The Gigahorse had been Joe’s chariot, but the Citadel was his base, his fortress. The Citadel didn’t have a wheel, so where would- 

It hits her then, with a flash like arc welding two pieces of metal, bright and hot and with the sudden crackle of ozone. She knows exactly where Joe put the killswitch, because he’s put it in the same place she put hers. The Citadel may not have a steering wheel, but it does have a gear shift. 

“The water,” she says urgently, her throat closing around the words. “It’s by the water.”

“Is there anything Dag can look for?” Toast is saying. “I mean, like herbs.”

“Oregano, if she can recognize it,” Mari replies. She puts a wizened hand on Furiosa’s good shoulder, as if trying to calm her. “I’ll need a carrier oil as well. ”

“What, like motor oil?”

“The _pump throttle_ ,” Furiosa snaps. 

Now they’re both paying rigid attention. “What’s there?” Mari says, leaning closer. 

“The-” and she’s coughing again, trying to find air that’s somehow not making it into her lungs, and Furiosa is so utterly done, so frustrated and _angry_ with how weak she feels. “The killswitch, the fucking killswitch. It’s under the pump throttle. By the milkers. He put it under the throttle-”

Toast is already on her feet and running for the door.


	18. Chapter 18

He doesn’t have much time - maybe 15 minutes at most before the armada speeds by. He’s counting on their tenders being empty, their water running low. He’s counting on the War Boys to be desperate enough to alter their path.

He’s not wrong. 

His final touch is to haul an empty fuel drum onto the service station’s flat gravel roof. He’s filled it with enough combustibles to last a few hours, and from a distance, it will look like the cooking fire of someone too confident or foolhardy to hide. 

He beats a hasty retreat back up the ridge, grateful that the wind is at his back and gusting hard enough to cover his tracks. 

He doesn’t stay. There’s too much to do. He needs to get as far ahead of the convoy as he can, to give the women as many hours of warning as possible. 

Somewhere behind him, below the edge of the horizon, a travel-weary War Boy inadvertently trips the wire, and the gel in the deep tanks ignites. 

Max is already two hours away, speeding into the west as the sky grows pale behind him, but somewhere in the back of his skull, the old Vuvalini gleefully whispers _Boom_.

 

****

 

The sun is just breaking over the tops of the mountains when the big pipes start to grumble, water bursting out in a glorious cascade over the wind-worn stone. It’s been seven hours, and the Wretched cluster at the Citadel’s base, tears mingling with the spray. 

Toast’s voice echoes off the pillars, the announcement system whining a little from feedback. “Furiosa promised you the water would flow! We have kept our promise.”

The people below roar with approval, and Furiosa, lying on the floor with Mari’s needle still in her arm, goes boneless with relief. 

 

****

 

The access hatch led to Joe’s private room. Of course it did. Mari puts a bag of fluid into her veins and makes her drink some thick milk concoction before she’s allowed to sit up, giving Furiosa plenty of time to survey the former warlord’s inner sanctum. 

It smells like him. Half-conscious and addled, the smell hits her so strongly that she hallucinates it’s his fingers checking her pulse, her ribs, the pupil of her good eye, even though it’s very clearly Mari’s weatherbeaten face looking down with concern. It’s a painful dichotomy, to see someone who is so clearly Vuvalini but to have the unmistakable reek of pustulent flesh and warlord sweat so clear in her nostrils. 

“You’re all right,” Mari says. “Give it a moment, you’ll feel better.” She thinks the panic comes from shock, but it doesn’t, or maybe it contributes but it’s not the root cause. Furiosa feels herself clench up inside, muscles tight and anticipating painful violation. She’s retreating into the back of her head, hunkering down and walling herself off in a way that she hasn’t needed in years. Her breath hitches, the smell of him choking her as surely as if his hands are once again around her throat. 

Mari seems to understand, then, and runs a gentle hand through the short fuzz of Furiosa’s hair, her thumb making small circles at her hairline. “Breathe through your mouth like you’re breathing through a straw,” she says quietly. “Do it from your diaphragm, nice and slow and deep. I know it hurts, but you’re all right. You’re safe. That’s a girl. That’s a good girl.”

It helps, a little. 

Slowly, her head clears, and she starts to regain ownership of her limbs. She’s wrung out, but her body is hers, her consciousness no longer drifting idly a few steps behind. Mari’s closed the door of the room, but outside the patter of War Pup feet is unmistakable. 

When closed, the access hatch is hidden beneath a large rug, its deep, burgundy pile effectively hiding any hint of the tunnel below. The War Pups had collected every piece of paper they could find from Joe’s effects, but they’d left everything else virtually undisturbed; Furiosa will have them strip the place to bare stone. (And maybe, just maybe, burn it for good measure.)

The sun’s high enough to suggest the coming heat of the afternoon when Furiosa is finally back on her feet, swaying a little, heavy with exhaustion, but clear-eyed and standing on her own. “It’s back to the Vault for you,” Mari says, in a tone that accepts no argument. “Food, then sleep. In that order.”

The water crisis is over. Gastown and the Bullet Farm are waiting at the end of the blacktop, malevolently silent, and somewhere, the surviving War Boys are speeding back to the Citadel, but for now, her people are safe. 

Mari is shuffling her down the hallway when one of the War Pups come running up. “Furiosa! Furiosa!”

The old Vuvalini frowns severely. “Not now, boy.”

The Pup is out of breath, but insistent. “Imperator Toast _says_. There’s War Boys below!”

All she can think of is, _No. No, it’s too soon._

And then, traitorously, _We don’t even have Max._

 

****

 

But it’s not the armada she’s expecting. Toast meets her at the lift, flanked by Amy, Maz and another Repair Boy named Egg; all four of them armed to the teeth and spoiling for a fight. The preparation turns out to be overkill, because the four War Boys standing below are in no condition for combat, blistered from sunburn and half-dead from dehydration. 

She knows them. Oh, she knows them. 

The lift slowly descends and stops a few feet above the ground. Toast is by her side, her rifle pointed at the Boy who steps forward. He’s older than the others, his body skewed like a vehicle frame after a hard wreck. If he’s surprised to see her, it registers only as a slight widening of his eyes. 

“Immortan Joe is dead,” Toast announces. “If you are looking to avenge him, you will find no mercy.”  


The War Boys stare, various degrees of skepticism and disbelief flickering across their red and peeling faces. Furiosa stares back, arms crossed over her aching ribs, her naked stump tucked into her good elbow. Ten days ago, she’d pulled her steering wheel hard to the left, knowing in her bones that she was consigning twelve loyal War Boys to their deaths. 

Four of them are standing in front of her now, eyeing her with well-deserved suspicion.

Finally, Ace lifts his chin. “Why?”

Toast’s rifle doesn’t twitch. “We are not things. If you are not things, then you stand with us. If you don’t stand with us, you have no place here.”

The younger two of the Boys look at each other in confusion, but Ace gravely considers her words. After a moment of thought, he looks to his three companions and nods slightly. They frown, but don’t argue. “We accept,” he says. 

Furiosa steps off the lift, landing heavily in the sand below. Her former lieutenant steps forward, every muscle screaming of distrust. She goes toe to toe with him, their foreheads practically touching. He was her left hand when her left hand was scrap and metal, and she’d amputated him just as surely as if he’d been flesh. 

She can’t ask for forgiveness, because she doesn’t regret what she’s done. 

He evenly meets her gaze. She has one eye and is covered in yellow and purple like an overripe plum, her naked stump tucked protectively against her aching ribs. He’s got one arm hanging, the harsh stipple of road rash up and down the length of his side and back. She’d betrayed him, and he’d attacked, and it’s a looming chasm between them. There is no reason why they shouldn’t have it out right here, right now. 

Finally, he says quietly, “Boss.” 

They understand each other.

She knocks her forehead against his, once, and swallows hard against the lump in her throat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I’ve kind of been hedging around Furiosa’s background, waiting for her comic to come out, because I’m a perfectionist, and I live and die (and live again!) by canon. Turns out there weren’t any surprises. (Spoiler alert: it’s exactly what we all expected, brutal and dark and gruesome, leaving more questions than answers. Needless to say I loved it.)
> 
> 2\. I’m raising the rating on this and changing some of the tags, just because I feel like I’m referencing more of the violence (sexual and otherwise) inherent in the Joe-era Citadel, and I recognize that some of y’all appreciate warnings. I’m generally terrible at tags, so if there’s something you think should be tagged but isn't, let me know and I’m happy to add it. 
> 
> 3\. I started this story with the intent to slash, but at this point, I’m not sure my versions of Max and Furiosa are emotionally capable of that. I mean, we’re at chapter 18 and they’re still literally hundreds of miles apart. They might get there eventually - I’m not making any promises, since our gal Fury is driving and I’m just here sitting in the back hanging on for dear life - but if you’re looking for a sure promise of fluffy sexytimes...I’m gonna have to disappoint you. I’m leaving the Max/Furiosa tag with the hope they will eventually find some peace in each other, but for now, it’s anybody’s guess.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making myself post every thousand words or so, so...oops. Here's another chapter. 
> 
> This references my one-shot [Seven Thousand and One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4110214).

Ace is alive. Out of all the guilt she’s been carrying, this has been the heaviest. Furiosa immediately conducts the War Boys into Mari and Cheedo’s hands, and lets Maz escort her back to the Vault. Even if they don’t forgive her, even if they end up fighting her, they’re alive, and she’s so relieved she could cry. 

“We’ll talk to the others,” Maz says quietly. “It’s a hard thing to hear that Daddy- that Immortan Joe is gone, but they’ll come around.”

She doesn’t deserve their loyalty, any of them. 

Capable has food waiting, and Furiosa eats mechanically, too tired to register anything beyond the movement of spoon to mouth. When she’s done, the former Wife hands her a steaming mug of tea. It’s sharp and green and tingles with a herbal burn. “The whole thing,” she instructs. 

Toast sniffs and makes a face. “Even from over here, it smells like death.”

Dag gives her a blank stare. “It should smell like _anti-death._ ”

Angharad’s presence lingers heavily in the room. 

Even though it’s midday, Furiosa allows herself to be bundled, shivering with exhaustion, off to the sleeping alcove. “I need plans,” she tells Toast on her way out, unsuccessfully fighting back a jaw-cracking yawn. “Gastown. Bullet Farm.”

Toast nods. “I’ll talk with the mothers, see what the Repair Boys and Pups know. We’ll come up with something.”

She’s sitting on the bed, blearily trying to decide if it’s worth taking off her boots, when Capable joins her, carrying a deep bowl of water and closing the curtain. “Will you let me help you?” she asks quietly. 

Furiosa’s eyes prick, and all she can do is nod. 

With gentle hands, Capable helps her undress, clucking in sympathy at the boiling sunset of greening bruises across Furiosa’s body, the stab wounds like gaping mouths just below her ribs. There is a new bruise at her stomach, angry and blue, the perfect imprint of Jammer’s boot. She is a nebula of violent color against a pale, sunless sky. 

She tries not to remember Valkyrie’s mouth, the way she’d mapped a secret astrology on every constellation of freckles. Capable is at once tender and consciously, deliberately chaste, but it’s been so long - _so long_ \- since someone touched her with anything approaching kindness that it almost hurts more than abuse. She remembers that night on the dunes, Val reaching out, trying to reconnect any way she could, but it had been too much, too soon, and Furiosa had been a hard knot of grief and scar tissue, unable to break free.

Capable smooths the damp cloth over Furiosa’s shoulders, over the deep slices left by her lost prosthetic. The water is hot, and Furiosa hisses when it hits raw flesh. That sets off a coughing fit, and when she regains her breath, she’s shaking and drenched in cold sweat, every breath knifing hard into her side. 

“Oh, Furiosa.” Capable’s voice is thick, and she pulls a heavy blanket around her, gently pulling Furiosa to her shoulder and rocking her like she sometimes rocks the littlest Pups. “You bear so much for us. You make it look so easy, to be so strong, so independent. You always have, and I- you’re just like us. You’ve always been like us. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She’s not just talking about the injuries. She’s talking about everything, from the moment Joe first assigned Furiosa to guard his Wives, silently reliving her own torture at the hands of Immortan Joe and the Organic Mechanic every time the women were bred. The Wives have had each other on this journey; Furiosa had Max, of a sort, for a time, and Valkyrie even less, but she’s in a circle of her own, estranged from both the Wives and the Vuvalini by virtue of her former position as Imperator. 

Max is gone, chasing his ghosts through the waste, and Valkyrie is - Val is -

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until the sobs tug hard on her ribs, every breath a razor thread through her body, and then once she knows she’s crying, she can’t seem to stop. Crying _hurts_ , hurts her bruised face, hurts her chest, hurts deep in places she thought had been burned away long ago. Furiosa hurts, Mothers, how she hurts, every cell in her body abraded, every nerve exposed and jumpy. 

She doesn’t remember the last time she cried, and it’s pouring out of her like the water tumbling over Joe’s grinning skull. She fists her good hand in Capable’s worn sweater, her stump pressed hard to her chest as if to stem the flood. She’d howl, but there isn’t the air for it; instead, she can only keen, a high, thin whine like failing brakes, and that’s exactly what this is, the ruined pieces of her clockwork soul finally succumbing to impossible wear. Her face is hot and damp on Capable’s shoulder, but the former Wife just hums and sways, gentle fingers palming the back of Furiosa’s head. 

As if from very far away, she hears the curtain move, and Capable say softly, calmly, “It’s okay, Dag. We’re all right,” and then the worn fabric falls back into place. 

It is not okay, and it is not all right. Furiosa can handle adversity, can take any punishment, and is intimately fluent in the language of violence. She is a warrior among warriors, her ferocity honed by survival. She is such a stranger to kindness that Capable’s effortless compassion is so unfamiliar, so deeply wounding, that at this moment, Furiosa would gladly trade the loss of her arm a thousand times if it meant she could escape. She hates it and craves it and the contradiction is shredding her raw. 

Capable is singing softly, words in a tongue Furiosa doesn’t understand but recognizes from her time guarding the Vault. She lets Furiosa cry herself out, rocking her like an infant until there’s only exhausted hiccups, and then dreamless sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

Furiosa wakes up sometime after midnight, coughing and deeply uncomfortable. Capable is curled at her side, sound asleep; at some point, someone pushed the other bed close, making a nest big enough for all the former Wives.

Cheedo opens one eye. “You okay?”

Furiosa nods, eyes watering as she catches her breath. “Just...hurts. ‘S fine.” She has to scoot down to the end of the bed to get out, trying her hardest not to disturb the other women. 

Cheedo follows her out to the common room, and busies herself making tea while Furiosa staggers out to piss. When she’s back, there’s a big mug of the same tingling herbal tea as earlier waiting for her at the table.

“Are you still passing blood?” Cheedo asks quietly, leaning over her own cup. 

“No.” 

“That’s good.” She dandles the tea ball. “Mari said your stab wounds looked like they were healing well.”

“Mm.” Furiosa stares into her mug, watching the herbs diffuse into the water. Breathing in the steam seems to help, and the herbal scent is sharp, just on the border of painful. 

“She’s worried about your cough, though.”

“Mm.”

“She said it could just be your lungs clearing out any congestion left over from the collapse.”

Furiosa thinks of the War Rig, of scrubbing the ubiquitous dust baked into the tiny crevices of the engine compartment. The crud she’s coughing up is similar, ochre striped with brown and red like the desert outside. 

It’s comfortable to think of herself as a vehicle. Engines don’t have feelings, don’t have souls. If they have a history, it’s inconsequential. They’re made to be used, and if they perform well, they are kept and maintained. If they break down, they are repaired, new parts replacing old. If they can no longer run, they are taken apart and used to bolster other, worthier vehicles. 

Furiosa has been Joe’s car. His hand has guided her steering wheel, his foot has pumped her brakes. She lost an arm, and it was replaced with parts. She could not function as a mother, so she’d been repurposed as a fighter, and there were no other options. She’d done everything she could, driven exactly as he’d wanted, to prevent herself from ending up just another rusted-out hulk half-buried in a dune. 

The day she stole his Wives was the first day she’d driven on her own, without his hands turning her wheel, and every moment since then she’s been speeding headlong into uncharted territory, her engines overheating and her suspension shot to hell. Angharad’s words still echo through her skull - _we are not things_ \- and she’s trying, oh, she’s trying to be a person, but there are moments when it’s easier just to be a rig, to be guzzoline-powered steel and let a driver direct her as he will. 

She looks at Cheedo, who was once called Fragile and is now regarding her frankly in the dim light of an oil lantern. 

It hurts to be human. 

“I had an idea,” Cheedo hedges, blithely unaware. “I mean. It’s not a priority. But it could be. We’re wasting a lot of water just pouring it onto the sand. What if we built some pipes from the skull down to the ground? With spigots. That way, the people could get the water they needed, and none of it would go to waste.”

She’s considering it, but she’s still stuck in sleep, moving slowly through the gears of her brain, and Cheedo mistakes her hesitation for disapproval. “I mean, it’s just an idea, we don’t-”

Furiosa shakes her head. “No. It’s good. I don’t know how much extra pipe we’d need, but talk to the Repair Boys, see what they think.” It’s not something she’d even thought of, the water running out. The aquifer _looked_ plenty deep, and Joe’s accounts seemed to indicate it was, but Cheedo is absolutely right to suggest conserving where they can. 

They’re quiet awhile, Cheedo sipping her tea, Furiosa breathing in the steam. 

“Capable told us what you did,” Cheedo says quietly. “How you swam. How you saved the Repair Boy.”

Furiosa doesn’t reply. There doesn’t seem to be an appropriate response. 

“Did you learn to swim in the Green Place?”

She purses her lips, blowing a rift through the steam. “Yes.”

“Furiosa, I...” The former Wife stares at her mug. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry we’re back here. I’m sorry the Green Place is gone.”

“We have water, and we have green.” The words come out automatically. “We have more than most.”

“Don’t tell me to be grateful,” Cheedo cautions, but adds, “I am, though.” 

The acrid herbal tea is cool enough to drink, and Furiosa lets it burn its way down her throat, like strange, plant-based guzzoline. 

“You knew Joe wouldn’t kill Dag,” Cheedo continues. “We were so sure he would, and you knew he wouldn’t.” She pauses, as if assembling her words. “Did Joe take your arm?”

Because it’s Cheedo, who is patching her up and looking at her right now with a broad, sympathetic face, Furiosa chooses not to get up and walk away. “Joe took a lot of things,” she says neutrally. Some of the things he took, Furiosa collected on his behalf, his invisible foot pressed hard on her accelerator. 

She coughs, and the sharp jolt of pain is oddly comforting. 

“Come back to bed,” Cheedo says, but Furiosa’s already shaking her head. 

“It’s easier if I’m sitting - I don’t want to wake the others-”

“This,” Cheedo says forcefully, “is the first night Capable actually slept with us since we came back.” 

Furiosa looks back at the red curtain. She can’t see the women inside, but she knows they’re there, curled together like bandicoots in the cold desert night. She doesn’t want to be with them. She needs her solitude, needs to be alone. She needs the chilly cab of her War Rig. She’s a vehicle waiting to be driven; she doesn’t belong with these women, she belongs in the garage. 

“We can prop you up with pillows,” Cheedo says. “That should help a little.”

“I…”

Cheedo’s rising, rounding the table to put a gentle hand on Furiosa’s good shoulder. “Come to bed,” she says. “You belong with us.”

There’s a hard whine of protesting gears in her head, but she lets Cheedo lead her back to the sleeping alcove, lets her nest her in cushions and blankets in the middle of the sleeping former Wives. 

She thinks she can’t possibly sleep, but Furiosa is out before Cheedo extinguishes the oil lamp, a knowing smile on her lips.


	21. Chapter 21

Max estimates he’s four hours ahead of the armada. Part of him wants to hang back and see if his traps are successful - but of course they are, he’s clever and he’s _good_ , he has to be, or he wouldn’t still be alive. 

Plus, the old Vuvalini is hanging over his shoulder, periodically cackling. He’s not sure if she’s riding pillion on the back of the bike - he’s strongly committed to not looking, because he has enough ghosts, thanks, and looking would mean acknowledging he’s acquired another - but she’s obviously there whether he acknowledges it or not, and so far, her occasional fits of mirth seem to coincide with about when his gifts should be detonating, so...he’s going with it. But not acknowledging that he’s going with it. 

He rides. The waste is a vast, shimmering expanse, high white clouds mirroring the shape of the dunes below. The tires spin a little on the loose sand as he mounts each crest. He’s heading into what he knows is Bleeding Lizard territory, but he’s going in loud and a little slow, despite the shrill warnings of his better judgement. He knows he can outrun them - he’s done it many times before, and although the bike is no V8, it’s no slouch either - and more importantly, he wants them on the alert for the coming armada. If he can make the Lizards do his dirty work, that’s better for everyone, isn’t it? 

The old Vuvalini whispers, and on a whim he listens, taking a detour to the south and within fifteen minutes, he stumbles upon a fantastic wreck, the driver’s corpse desiccated and half-eaten by crows. The tanks are full of guzzoline - full! - there’s a box of rifle ammo in the trunk, and there’s even a stash of water and some kind of jerky hidden under the passenger’s seat. 

Well. If he has to have another ghost following him around, at least this one is proving useful. He’s not sure if she’s reading his mind or if he’s spoken aloud; either way, her snort seems approving. 

 

****

 

Furiosa’s gone when Capable wakes, but that’s not really a surprise. Cheedo is snuggled next to Dag, blankets pulled up over them both in a featureless mound; Toast is nowhere to be seen. 

The morning sun is just starting to filter through dome’s wall of green, the glass pebbled with nighttime condensation. The Vuvalini are already up, Mari paging through a book while she drinks her tea and Amy cleaning her gun at the common table. “Toast is up top with a couple of her boys,” Amy says, by way of greeting. “She wanted a good look at the windmills before the heat sets in.”

“Is Furiosa with her?”

Mari shakes her head, and gestures toward the Vault’s upper level. “Sleeping, finally.”

Capable turns on the little electric burner to start the porridge. “I heard her and Cheedo up in the middle of the night.”

“Best to let them all sleep,” says Mari, turning back to her book. It looks like one of Cheedo’s medical texts. 

The door to the Vault is permanently open; the only reason the door itself is still on its hinges is because Toast had pointed out that, as distasteful as it might be, it was smart to have a climate-controlled and air-filtered space they could close off. She’d consulted with the Repair Boys about turning the door around, so it could only be locked from the inside, but it was a heavy project and the need to understand the electrical and water systems was much more pressing. 

One of the War Pups knocks tentatively, and at Capable’s permission, comes darting inside. “Please, Capable,” he says, although the awed way he says her name, it could very well be _Your Holiness_. “The Ace wants to speak with Imperator Furiosa.”

Amy looks up from reassembling her rifle and with a single smooth movement, cocks it. 

Capable wipes her hands on a towel, and lets the Pup lead her to the door. Outside is the oldest War Boy she’s ever seen, a grizzled veteran who is twisted and gnarled like one of the hardy banksia out in the waste. He regards her warily. 

“I’m called Capable,” she says. “Furiosa is sleeping. Can I help you?”

“They call me the Ace,” the War Boy says. “Need to talk to the boss about Gastown.”

“We’re all bosses here,” Capable says mildly, but turns to the Pup. “Rawr, can you please get Toast? She’s up by the windmills.”

As the Pup scampers off, Ace snorts. “Boy’s too young to have a name.”

“He picked it,” says Capable. “We have to call him something. Please, come in.”

The War Boy steps through the entrance, automatically assessing his surroundings. He catches Amy’s eye, and at her raised eyebrow, nods in acknowledgement of her weapon. He seems deeply uncomfortable. 

“Would you like some tea?” Capable offers. “Food?”

He shakes his head. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather talk with the Imperator-”

The sound of deep, painful coughing drifts from the upper level, and Capable’s chest constricts in sympathy. She can still smell Furiosa on her shirt, a lingering tang of diesel and sweat; the surge of protectiveness is as fierce as it is sudden. “Now is not a good time,” Capable says firmly. “You’re welcome to wait, but if it concerns Gastown, it concerns all of us.”

Ace chews on this. “Alright,” he finally agrees, but it’s clear from his posture he doesn’t like it. 

Toast isn’t long. She comes in windblown and sweaty, her contingent of Pups scattering to other parts of the Citadel as soon as she gets to the door. If she’s surprised to see the War Boy sitting at the common table, she doesn’t show it. “You look better,” she says genially, accepting a bowl of porridge from Capable.

“It’s about Gastown,” Ace says without preamble. “Those boys get mean without water.”

Toast chews impassively. “I’d imagine.”

“We’ve had agreements,” he insists. “Immortan Joe, the Bullet Farmer, the People Eater - when agreements break down, there’s chaos.”

“You don’t have to explain the Bullet Farmer to me,” Toast mutters. More loudly, she adds, “They’re dead, all three of them.” 

Shock ripples across his lopsided face, and he involuntarily glances back at the Vault door. “Who…” He stops, the words tripping over themselves. “Who is running those places, then?”

“We don’t know,” Capable admits. 

“Gastown’s not War Boys,” Ace cautions. “Do you know how many came out in pursuit?”

“A full War Party,” says Toast. “From both Gastown and the Bullet Farm.”

He frowns. “And how many days since the...last delivery?” There’s an involuntary twitch, like he’s still feeling the burn of Furiosa’s betrayal. 

“Eleven,” Toast says. She looks around the table, at Mari and Amy and Capable. “We found some of Joe’s records. Looks like regular deliveries of water, milk and produce. If he’s kept them on a short leash, they’re licking the dust from their cisterns about now.”

“Makes ‘em dangerous.” Ace folds his arms. “You got anyone on the signals?”

“I’ve had Pups up there since we got back,” Toast says. “Not a glimmer.”

Amy frowns. “Maybe they’re waiting for the others to return.”

“It’s possible.” 

Ace shakes his head. “They’ll have contingencies. Immortan had contingencies.”

Toast snorts around a mouthful of porridge. “Yeah. We killed all his contingencies.”

“We need to have a meeting,” Capable says. “One with all the affected parties: the Repair Boys, Pups, War Boys-” she nods to Ace, “the milk mothers, someone from the people below, everyone.” 

Ace blinks in confusion. “Wait. The Imperator isn’t the new Immortan?”

“Who told you that?” Toast says flatly. 

“No one - I just assumed...”

When they’d first gotten back, Capable had wanted Furiosa to take over, but the longer they’re here, the more involved she herself gets in the day-to-day running of the Citadel, the more she’s understanding how poor a fit it would be. Furiosa does what she needs to do, and she would lead an army to victory if pressed, but she is a warrior through and through. The last few days have been hellish, not only because of her injuries. Furiosa isn’t someone who is used to negotiating, and right now, what the Citadel needs most is someone to listen, someone to talk to all the factions and stitch them together into a functional society. Toast is better at it, but her temper is short, and her patience even shorter. Cheedo is patient, but she’s still easily intimidated; Dag has thrown herself wholly into horticulture, and it feels unfair to ask more of her when she’s spending every waking hour up to her elbows in soil. Mari is training Cheedo. Amy is training Toast. Angharad is gone. 

It hits her, then, that she’s the one left, that if she wants to ensure a political structure absent of a warlord, she has to create it herself. It’s a terrifying thought, but at the same time, it feels...right. Hadn’t she brought Nux to their side? She _misses_ Nux, misses his cheerful enthusiasm, but if nothing else, he proved that change was possible. 

“There is no Immortan,” Capable says firmly, and for the first time since they’ve gotten back, she feels like the ground is solid under her feet. “Joe was never Immortan, and no one else is either. We will work together.” She looks around at the people around her, at Ace’s cautious confusion, at the ghost of a smile on Mari’s lips. “I’ll talk with the others. We can figure out how to approach Gastown.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS. I can't even express how much your wonderful, thoughtful comments mean to me. This has suddenly become as much a personal journey for me as it is for our friends; I wrote constantly as a kid and then as a teenager, but when I went off to college I made the conscious decision to pursue a career that would provide more financial stability than being a writer could offer. Fast-forward ten years and two degrees and the busy-ness of being a grownup, and this has become the first thing I've really, truly _worked_ on since I was 18. It's been incredible to re-learn what it means to apply ass to chair and words to page. Writing was something thought I'd grown out of, and oh my god, it turns out I haven't.
> 
> Also, I am having fun like whoa. I don't remember what my life was like before Fury Road, but I'm sure it was _boring_.


	22. Chapter 22

Even though she’s started out early, the day passes much faster than Capable can believe. She goes to the Pups and requests their assistance in organizing what she’s starting to think of as the Citadel’s first council meeting; they practically fall over each other in their eagerness to run messages back and forth. The meeting is scheduled for the following day, with all representatives cautiously accepting. With the Pups’ help, she draws up lists of concerns to be addressed - food, water, security, maintenance - and spends a large chunk of the morning poring through the Vault library, learning how to facilitate and angsting about procedure. 

“Just do your best,” Amy says in passing, as Capable is fisting her hair in her hands with frustration over one particularly dense tome. “It’s more than anyone else has done around here. Keep a level head, keep everyone respectful, and it will work out.” The old Vuvalini quirks a smile. “Not saying it’s going to be easy - these things are hard as hell, but keep your wits about you, girl, and you’ll make it.”

Furiosa reappears when the sun’s well overhead, stumbling down to the common area, hugging her ribs and breathing hard. Puffy with sleep, she sways in place, blinking as if she’s not sure where she’s supposed to be. Mari takes one look and immediately steers her back to bed. 

The tension is palpable. “I know we’ve already been through the Organic Mechanic’s supplies,” Capable hears Mari murmur to Cheedo, “but maybe we missed something. We have to look again.”

Cheedo nods grimly. 

Dag drops down at the table across from Capable, bringing with her an intimidating stack of her own books. Oblivious to anything else, she squints at the pages, muttering about the antibacterial properties of various herbs. “Garlic,” she says at one point, and then peers at Capable, not really seeing her. “It’s garlic.”

When she can’t possibly stand reading another word, Capable leaves the Vault to walk around, stopping to chat with the various Citadel denizens along the way. Virtually everyone knows about Immortan Joe’s demise, but few people have actually taken hold of their newfound freedom; it’s hard to walk away from water, and even harder to loosen years of shackles. She’s felt so useless, but listening to the concerns of others - practical or not - makes a strange sort of calm sink into her bones. The Repair Boys are worried about guzzoline, oil and salvage; under Keno’s leadership, they seem to have largely accepted the new Joe-less doctrine of the Citadel. The remaining War Boys are less convinced, and they posture and growl at her, but she understands, and doesn’t push. The Wretched working in the kitchens, gardens and sewers are uninformed and worried about everything, outlandish rumors looming large in dark places, and she does her best to be a figure of calm authority. Not a single one of them has ever heard of a union - and frankly, until this morning Capable hadn’t either - and she talks herself hoarse explaining. The milk mothers are the easiest; she’s had several conversations with Plenty, and Plenty has eagerly spread the word to the other women. 

When she gets back to the Vault, she immediately heads for the chalkboard, scribbling down everything she remembers. Toast is sprawled by the windows, deep in conversation with Keno, Maz and three of the older War Pups. They’ve sketched out a complicated series of boxy diagrams on the stone floor. It sounds like more conversations about the electrical grid. Mari and Cheedo have their heads together at the electric stove, rendering down some strongly-smelling herbal concoction. 

Capable compiles her notes in one of Joe’s old ledgers, writing small to preserve as much space as possible. Toast eventually finishes up with the electrical plans, and her powdery consultants depart. 

“I’m pretty sure Cheedo’s trying to poison us,” Toast teases, joining Capable at the table. “That stuff smells _terrible_.”

Cheedo shoots her a look that announces her work is Very Serious Business, and is not to be taken lightly. She’s bound her hair in a practical knot at the top of her head, limp strings escaping in the heat, an open botanical text resting in the crook of her elbow.

Toast is already moving on, flipping through the pages Capable’s written. “This looks good. If we can actually talk about all of this, it’ll be a great start.”

“I’m waiting to see what Furiosa thinks,” Capable admits. 

Mari stops stirring. With a sigh, she hands her spoon to Cheedo and comes and sits across from Toast and Capable. “You can’t involve Furiosa in this,” she says quietly. 

“What? Why not?” asks Toast. “She’s the one who got us all this way. Of course she’s involved.”

“She needs to heal,” says Mari, “and right now, healing means rest.”

Cheedo stirs, pretending not to listen. 

“So, wait.” Toast frowns. “Did she say she doesn’t want to be involved? We need her.”

“She needs rest,” Mari repeats. “She got you out so you could run your own lives. It’s time you started.”

It’s an obvious thing, one they’ve all been too selfish to acknowledge. They’ve been leaning on Furiosa because she’s let them, but that time has run out. If Capable is honest with herself, that time ran out days ago, and Furiosa’s been stubbornly limping along ever since, tires blown and reserves on empty. Rebuilding a society, well - Furiosa’s not any more of an expert than they are, and they’ve been tiptoeing behind like scared children when they should have been walking beside her. 

They need Furiosa, need her to be the bridge between the old order and the new, but because they need her so badly, they need her to get well. Capable has eyes; it’s obvious that Cheedo and Mari are worried, and there is no coincidence to Dag’s sudden interest in medicinal herbs.

It’s been a handsbreadth of days since they almost lost Furiosa on the road. Just yesterday - was it only yesterday? - Capable had been pressed against the slick stone wall of the aquifer, panic thundering in her ears as the water churned behind her, so certain she was lost again. Furiosa doesn’t know how to give up; she’ll keep going until she’s dead, and continue for ten minutes after.

Capable suppresses a shudder.

Toast is barreling towards incredulity at full speed. “That’s not a decision you can make-”

“The meeting is yours and yours alone,” Mari says severely. “You’re not going to ask her about it, or tell her what’s happening, or mention it all, because if she knows about it, she’ll be compelled to assist, and if you’re trying to maintain political control, the last thing you want is for her to keel over during your big meeting.”

“There’ll be questions if she’s not there,” Toast warns. 

“Let there be questions,” the old Vuvalini snaps. “If you girls are going to stand on your own two feet, you need to damn well do it.”

Toast opens her mouth like she’s going to protest, but Mari cuts her off. “ _No._ ”

“It’s all right,” Capable breaks in. “We can do it.”

Toast actually hisses at her, teeth bared like a wild animal. “That’s not the point-”

“It is, though. It’s exactly the point.” Capable looks around at her sisters, at the old Vuvalini who is so small and determined and ready to fight them. She is a fearsome hawk squaring up to push her fledglings out of the nest, and Toast, dear fierce Toast, is suddenly, inexplicably terrified of the ground. “We can do this.”

Toast looks unconvinced. “I know we can-”

“No,” says Capable. “We _can_. Mari’s right. Furiosa got us out of this vault, and if we’re back here, it’s by our own choice. I know it hasn’t been easy, but we never thought we’d even get this far. How long did we sit in here and daydream of making things better?”

“Angharad was the one daydreaming,” Toast mutters.

“We were right there with her,” Capable insists. Angharad’s words are chalked onto the floor, scuffed by footsteps but still visible. They burn hot and white against the stone. “Angharad was just the one with the courage to speak up. She’s not here-” and it’s hard to say, but she has to say it, has to speak the truth even when it’s raw and hurting- “so now it’s up to us.”

 _We keep moving_. 

Toast sniffles, her eyes red with mutinous grief, but she swallows hard and nods. “Fine,” she says thickly, and Cheedo comes over to put her arms around Toast’s shoulders. “Fine. You’re right. I just.”

“I know,” says Capable quietly. “I’m scared, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, you guys. 25k words! What is up with that???? Seriously, I wouldn't be anywhere close to this without your support. You all deserve cookies, but since this is the internet, I'll just give you moar chapters instead. 
> 
> I'm really getting a feel for the overall plot. I've got the controls all figured out, time to just sit back see where this vehicle takes us. (This is so much fun like really SO MUCH FUN.)


	23. Chapter 23

Breathing aches, and coughing does nothing to help. She’s developed an ominous undertone to each inhale, a wet crackle that triggers vague memories of the smell of sweat and the acrid haze of flaming oil. She’d punctured a lung before - Furiosa knows this, even if the memories aren’t explicit, and some deep, desperate part of her recognizes the noise. It’s the sort of noise that even animals recognize, and then crawl off into darkened places to be alone. 

She’s not ready yet. She has to get the women prepared, has to make sure that when the coming armada roars into view, when Gastown and the Bullet Farm swarm the walls, her people are ready. They have to be ready, even if she herself is not. 

She doesn’t know who to talk to. The women are allied too strongly - she considers Toast her most likely confidant, but after the binding incident and the associated earful from Capable, she’s not certain she can take Toast aside and say, “I think I’m dying - here’s what you need to do” without it turning into a larger crisis. The Vuvalini would shame her for giving up, but it doesn’t feel like giving up; it feels calculated, practical. 

She really needs Max. _You keep moving._ They have to keep moving, even if - especially if - she falls behind. He understood that. He’d understand it now. 

She fully expected Max to run, but there’s a deeply-buried part of her that is irrationally hurt he hasn’t returned. She doesn’t expect him to return, but she wants him to, wants beyond all sense and reason. They’d fought well together, and she’d hoped - 

Hope is a mistake. He’d said it himself. 

She’s escaped Mari’s overbearing ministrations, and is sitting up above the Citadel on the highest terrace, letting her good eye go unfocused as she stares at the east - _where is the armada, it’s out there, it has to be_ \- trying to soak up as much of the heat as she possibly can. The sun’s high overhead, but even wrapped in a borrowed blanket she’s shivering. She’s been cold since they got out of the aquifer. Part of her feels like a ghost, like she traded her life for Jammer’s and never really came back up. 

Ace appears on her left, careful to step into her visual range before leaning on the railing. “Boss.” He’s good at lounging, good at looking as if he’s not ready to spring into action at any instant. She knows his gnarled shoulders hurt him, but he’s never once complained, never once let it slow him down.

Furiosa feels weak, inadequate. 

He eyes her blanket. “Bit warm out here for that.”

She shakes her head. “How are the vehicles?”

“Getting there. Finally got the engine rebuilt on that old rig. A couple more days, we’ll have something as can haul.” 

“Good.”

He gives her a sidelong glance. “You know there’s a meeting going on.”

She’s heard murmured conversation. She knows Capable is digging into the politics of the Citadel, forging alliances. “Yeah.” It’s good. It’s exactly what needs to happen. The girls are giving her an out by being secretive about it, and Furiosa is just too exhausted to call their bluff. 

Ace folds his hands on the railing, looking her over when she coughs and tries to catch her breath. They’re quiet awhile, watching the desert shimmer, a herd of what must be camels bobbing through the glassy mirage. “I’ve got a few years on my bones,” he finally says. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, “you do.” It’s impressive, really, how long he’s lived. The lumps on his neck and back have done nothing to slow him. 

“Seen a lot of things.”

She nods. 

“Seen a lot of War Boys at the end of their half-lives,” he says, and this time he doesn’t look away. “Drive long enough, you learn the sound of an engine that’s broke.”

She makes herself meet his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t owe me nothing,” he says, but his tone suggests the exact opposite. Suggests, _you lied and threw me off the War Rig; if you still want my trust, start talking._

He’s right. She couldn’t trust him with the liberation of the Wives, but she needs someone to help her right now, and he’s offering. 

It’s too hard to explain, too hard to come up with the words to express everything. All she can come up with is, “It’s getting hard to breathe.”

Ace nods, unsurprised.

“Don’t tell the others,” she says. 

He nods again. “What do you need?”

“I need them to be ready.”

“They will be.” He considers the desert. “Who else knows?”

“Mari, and Cheedo. Only them.” 

“That’s not gonna last.”

“They’ve got enough to worry about. I just need have to make it past the armada.”

He sizes her up. “Cutting it close, boss.”

She exhales, a crackle like chipping paint. It’s what she expected, but hearing it confirmed still feels like getting punched. “I know.” He’s a half-life, older than she is, and she might die before him. The irony is bruising. 

“Might live through it, though. You’re a full-life. You got high octane.” It’s as much of a pep talk as she’s ever heard from him. 

She shrugs. Hope is a mistake. She knows that now. She hadn’t been so naive to think her problems would all disappear when they got to the Green Place; she’d been naive enough to think the Green Place even still existed. She’d given everything up to try and find it again, and here she is, back at the Citadel, Joe’s brand still raised beneath her skin. 

“I need to know you’ll take care of things,” Furiosa says quietly. 

He nods, once, a quick jerk of assent. Of course he does. There was never any doubt.

She doesn’t make it three more days. She doesn’t even make it three more hours. By midday, the shivering starts in earnest, and she’s left clinging to the railing in a disoriented fog. She’s vaguely aware of someone calling her name, but she's too far gone to respond. It might be Cheedo, peeling her fingers from the railing one by one. It might be Ace, hefting her up over his shoulder like a Pup and taking her out of the warmth and back into darkness. 

Water swirls around her like Valkyrie’s dark hair, and she presses into the cloud of strands. It’s cold, so cold, and she can’t stop shaking. She’s at once bound and drowning, her prosthesis is dragging her down, but her straps are too tight and she can’t find the buckles. 

_She went under the wheels._

_Did you see it?_

_But did you see it?_


	24. Chapter 24

The only room big enough to hold everyone is the Garage, which is largely empty after the War Party had gone racing after Furiosa and never come back. People sit in knots, the milk mothers clustered together, a gaggle of kitchen workers near the front, the remaining War Boys lingering against the back wall and hesitant to get any closer. Keno heads up the Repair Boys, giving Capable a nod as they come in. 

With the help of a couple of her Pups, Toast scoots a large metal ammo container over to where Capable is standing. “Here,” she says, smirking. “I got you a soapbox.”

Dag sniffs. “More like anti-soap.”

“Very funny, both of you,” Capable retorts, but Toast is laughing and it’s all going to be fine.

When she thinks everyone is assembled, she hops up on the ammo box and waves until they’re quiet. “Can everyone hear me?” She takes a deep breath. “My name is Capable. I was one of Joe’s breeders. You know he’s dead, and the Citadel is ours.

“Right now, we have food and we have water. We have reasonable defenses against bandits. We can survive. What we also have is to take back some of the things Joe stole from us. We have the opportunity to define our lives for ourselves.”

“What’s that even mean?” one of the kitchen workers calls out. 

“This is our home,” says Capable firmly. “We get a say in how it’s run. All of us.”

They all look so uncertain, a sea of faces turning to each other in confusion. 

“Look,” says Capable. “It’s not going to be easy. But I think if we all take turns and talk about what we want, it’ll be a little more clear. Okay?”

Halfhearted shrugs. She’s failing. They’re not engaging, they’re waiting for her to make the decisions for them-

Then Plenty - bless her - leverages herself to her feet, and stands amid her fellow milkers. “I’ll talk for us,” she announces. “My name is Plenty. We are the milkers. We know our value. We’ve agreed to continue producing milk for as long as needed. In return, we want assurances of our safety. We want food and water.” She looks around at the women sitting at her feet, hopeful faces framed with elaborate cornrows. “We want our families with us.”

One of the hydroponic workers hesitantly raises a hand. “Will you take new milkers?” she asks, one hand resting protectively on her barely-swollen belly. “If...if it don’t live-”

Plenty’s already nodding. “No one,” she says fiercely, “will ever take our babies from us again. You come to us, you bring your baby.”

Several of the milk mothers dab at their eyes, and Capable feels her own well up in sympathy.

“Wait,” says a kitchen worker. “If she gets to be a milker, can I go work in the gardens?”

“Who’s gonna work in the kitchen?” the woman next to him snarls. 

All of the sewer workers immediately raise their hands. Two even jump to their feet.

“All right,” Capable calls out. “So there are some of you who want to switch jobs. That’s excellent. For each faction, you’ll need to talk amongst yourselves and decide what qualifications are necessary for new workers, and how many new workers you’ll accept.”

“I got a question,” one of the War Boys says, slouched against the back wall. “If this-” he indicates the Citadel with a finger, “is all ours, why’s Imperator Furiosa not here? Ain’t she the new Immortan?”

There’s a murmur of agreement through the crowd. “Boltcutter,” someone says, and other voices pick it up. “Boltcutter, Immortan Boltcutter.”

Capable’s mouth goes dry, but Jammer rockets to his feet. “Not even Joe was Immortan,” he declares. “He’s dead! He told us not to get addicted to water, but water’s what we run on, like guzzoline in an engine! He kept us dry and thirsty, and he was wrong!”

“He will conduct us to Valhalla!” one of the War Boys snaps. “He is the one who grabbed the sun!”

The other Repair Boys are up now, flanking Jammer. “He lied to us,” Spade says. His words shake with emotion. “He was from the Before, when everyone had enough, and he _knew_ what we needed, and he kept it from us.”

“No!” The War Boy trembles, teeth bared. “It’s slander. Furiosa traitored him! She stole his property!”

“We are not things!” Dag’s voice rings out, and the Boys all look to her. “We are not property. You are not property. None of us are. Joe thought he could own people, well. You can’t. He tried, and now he’s rotting flesh in the sun.”

The crowd is silent a moment. “But...Furiosa,” says one of the hydroponics workers. “I don’t get it. She’s the Boltcutter, she’s set us free. She can be Immortan if she wants.”

Bag of Nails. That’s what Capable had first heard her called. Tough as leather on the outside and nothing but sharp and metal within. Now they’re calling her the Boltcutter, and even though they mean it with respect, it’s still another object, a tool, a thing. Furiosa is still a thing to them, something over which they can claim a measure of ownership. She’s not a person. She never has been. They would let themselves be ruled by her, and they would never once let themselves see her face. 

“She doesn’t want,” says Jammer. “Know how I know? Because she en’t here. Where are the other Imperators? Gone. She’s the one left. She could take this place in a second if she wanted, and she hasn’t.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” one of the War Boys mutters. 

“It doesn’t have to,” Maz says. “She’s letting us make our own decisions. By not being here, she’s telling us it’s okay, because if she was here, we’d all be waiting for her to talk for us.” 

There’s a murmur of agreement. 

Jammer ducks his head, biting his lip at Capable. “I mean, that’s right, innit? She’s not...lurking?”

She shakes her head, throat tight. “No, she’s not lurking.”

It’s a start. The War Boys are still upset, but there’s one or two who are trying to calm the others, and Capable knows they’ll come around. It’s a hard shock; she can still feel Nux’s chapped lips beneath her knuckles, still hear the grief pouring out of his body at the rejection of his god. All healing takes time. 

The meeting goes on. They discuss salvage, and the need for more vehicles. There’s a broken-down rig in the Repair Shop that’s a few days away from being operational, and plans to fabricate a new tank to reestablish trade, but they need metal. The hydroponics workers have already been working a bit with Dag and the terrace gardeners, but they’re thrilled to get public recognition. Gradually, people open up, talking about what they do, offering suggestions to improve yield or decrease waste or generally make things better. 

The sun is low in the sky, but no one has complained. The kitchen workers disappear for awhile and come back with loaves of dense flatbread. Cool water is distributed, and for awhile, there’s a quiet lull in conversation. 

When everyone’s eaten, Capable breaks them into smaller groups where no two members come from the same faction. It’s partially just to break the ice, partially to explain what they do, and partially because she’s herself needs a breather from facilitating. She circles the room, watching as barriers are broken. 

A Repair Boy talks with one of the milkers about the efficiency of pumps. One of the hydroponics workers discusses cabbage with someone from the kitchen, while a War Boy slouches nearby and tries not to look like he’s listening. 

It’s the best thing Capable’s ever seen. She looks over at Toast and grins. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one of the War Pups come skidding into the room, making a beeline for the nearest Repair Boy. He points to Capable, and then the Pup is ducking through the crowd.

It’s Tizz, one of the Pups she’d asked to keep an eye on the signal mirrors. “What is it?” Her stomach leaps into her throat. Possibilities flash through her mind: the pumps failing, a bandit attack, the War Party on the horizon- 

“Bullet Farm,” the War Pup says breathlessly. “The Bullet Farm is coming.”

 

****

 

Max is parked on a rise, holding the end of a piece of gauze with his teeth as he wraps it around his arm. It’s just a graze, but it’s still bleeding, and the old Vuvalini clucks in sympathy. 

Glory is playing in the dirt a few feet away, humming to herself as she arranges rocks and bits of dried grass. 

He’s been riding non-stop for almost two full days, and the landscape is starting to blur together in a way that’s generally not healthy. He thinks he can trust the Bleeding Lizards to give him another two hours ahead of the armada, and the evening heat is still intense, so he tucks the bike into the shadows and lays down for a quick nap. 

He’s never been a heavy sleeper, but he still somehow senses the old Vuvalini’s alarm, coming awake half a breath before she snaps, “Boy!”

There’s no one on the horizon, no headlights in the dark or movement except for the hush of the ever-present wind across the sand. Overhead, the waning moon is veiled by thin, high clouds. The night is silent and silver, and the Keeper is looking at him like she’s been shot, and then Glory’s voice is a high wail: “Help us! You were supposed to help us!”

Something terrible has happened. He knows it, knows it from the stricken faces of his ghosts, from the frigid heaviness in his bones. “Oh no. No no no.” He scrubs at his hair and spins in place. 

The old Vuvalini claps her hands, the noise as loud as a gunshot. “Stop standing and start riding!”

_Help us, Max! Why can’t you help us?_

Max grabs his things and jumps back on the bike. The engine is a wild roar against the blue velvet sky, gravel spraying out like the Milky Way behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sososo sorrynotsorry for the previous chapter, I love you all but I’m a horrible person and I’ve always had an ungodly love of whump and in this movie WHUMP IS CANON SERIOUSLY IT’S LIKE A LOVELY BLOODY, ANGSTY CHRISTMAS OVER HERE *whispers* I swear I am not GRR Martin (at least not yettttttT). 
> 
> Also I was totally going to write all kinds of interesting politicking at the council meeting, but then I ended up with like 3000 words of much more interesting stuff that comes after that, and anyway I’ve been sitting a bunch of necessary-but-tedious meetings at work all week and can’t be bothered to make myself sit through another one, even if it’s fictional. So this chapter is basically a tl;dr that needed to happen and if I cared more, I’d make it interesting, but I figure YOU probably don’t want to sit through a meeting right now either, amirite? *eyebrow waggle*
> 
> Also, I saw a huge fantastic thread on Tumblr about the Keeper being Max's newest ghost, and I really really want to incorporate some of those fantastic ideas into this fic since I was heading in that direction anyway, but I CAN'T FIND THE STUPID THREAD. If those were your ideas, I'm asking permission to borrow them and use them gently. I promise I'll make it awesome.


	25. Chapter 25

“Bullet Farm,” the War Pup says breathlessly. “Bullet Farm is coming.”

“What do you mean, Bullet Farm?” Capable says, stupidly. 

“Vehicles,” gasps Tizz. “Through the telescope.”

Toasts snaps her teeth like an animal backed into a corner. “Is it a war party?” 

“It’s a cloud. On the Road.”

The War Pup bounces on her toes. "They're coming here fast."

Capable feels the papers slip from her hands, featherlight sheets catching the air and drifting around her legs as they fall. She looks at Toast, sees her sister’s dark eyes go wide, her jaw tight with determination. 

“I’ll get us ready here,” Toast says resolutely, giving Capable a hard shove toward the door, but Capable is already moving. “Go get Furiosa.”

 

****

 

Capable runs into Ace crossing the rope bridge between towers. “Bullet Farm,” she says, “the Bullet Farm is-” 

He nods, not slowing down. “I seen. ‘M on it.”

She grabs his arm. “What can we do?”

For a split second, he stares at her hand, as if the physical contact is so utterly unexpected he just shuts down. Almost as quickly, he shakes himself out of it. “We got War Boys,” he snaps. “They know the drill.” And then he’s off. 

It’s not helpful, it’s completely not helpful, and she pushes herself forward, feeling the unnatural cloud on the horizon hard at her back. They should have planned better. They were going to plan, that’s what today was all about, planning, they’d wanted to plan, but between the pumps and Furiosa’s injuries and everything else, they just...hadn’t. They’ve been back ten days, and they don’t have a fucking plan. 

Furiosa has to have a plan. She’s always got a plan. She had seventeen different guns stashed in the War Rig, she sees threats coming ten miles away, she’s a warrior, she _knows_. Capable and the others had followed her blindly into the desert, and then blindly followed her back, and they’ve been following her blindly ever since. It’s stupid, it’s so stupid. Capable is naive, all of the women, they’re so naive to think they can run this fortress after being locked away for so long. 

She skids around a corner, oncoming War Pups scattering around her, and makes it to the Vault. The door is closed - why is the door closed, they’d agreed not to close it, they’d _agreed_ \- and it takes every ounce of her strength to leverage it open. 

Mari is there immediately, wizened hands sliding over the door’s smooth metal. “I _said_ , now’s not a good- Capable!” Her eyes flick upward. “What’s wrong?”

The door was closed. 

Capable peers over Mari’s shoulder, despite the Vuvalini’s attempt to block her view. Cheedo is sitting waist-deep in the wading pool, looking up at Capable in white-faced distress. Furiosa is propped up against her chest, slack and shivering in the water. Her breath is short and fast, whistling like a leaky bellows. It’s terrifyingly close to the sounds she made in the Gigahorse. 

Capable’s brain sputters, the world graying out as she tries to process. “What…?”

Mari is pulling the Vault closed behind her. “It’s what we feared. Lung fever. We found her up top-”

“She _can’t_!” The words spill out, plaintive and angry. “No, wake her up, we _need_ her-”

Cheedo’s shaking her head, sponging water onto Furiosa’s face. Joe’s former Imperator coughs and mumbles, half-lidded eyes flickering across something that the other women can’t see. “She’s delirious, we’re trying to cool-”

“The Bullet Farm is coming,” Capable spits out. “The Bullet Farm is _on its way_ -”

“Are they attacking?” Mari cuts in. “Are we in danger?”

“I don’t know, we need Furiosa-”

“No!” Cheedo snaps. “She can’t help us. She _can’t_.” And then Cheedo is crying, baring her teeth and clutching at Furiosa, who coughs like she’ll never breathe again. 

“ENOUGH.” Mari’s voice is iron, hard and heavy and immediate. “Panic will kill you just as sure as a bullet.”

They don’t have a plan. They don’t have a plan, and now they don’t have Furiosa-

Mari slaps her, the loud crack of flesh on flesh echoing under the dome. “Focus,” she says severely. “Now. What do you do?”

Capable takes a deep breath, trying to be calm. “Ace is rousing the War Boys. Toast is getting everyone inside.”

As if on cue, the wail of the alert sirens slices through the afternoon. Furiosa jerks and mutters something that sounds like, “Fang it!”

“Furiosa!” Cheedo shakes her a little, but she’s already slipped back into her impenetrable fog. 

Fang it. Capable isn’t a War Boy and doesn’t know how they fight, but she knows what a fang is: a tooth gone long and hard like a knife, the body made into a weapon. Mari is loading her rifle, sliding shells into the chamber with an ease of long practice. She looks at Capable, her lips gone thin and hard. “One man, one bullet. Can you shoot?”

Capable shakes her head. 

“Pity.” The old Vuvalini shakes her head and sighs. “I suppose now is when you learn.”

 

****

 

Immortan Joe had emptied the Citadel in pursuit of his Wives, mustering every able-bodied warrior to follow the War Rig. The Bullet Farm and Gastown had not, and twelve days overdue for their deliveries of water and produce, they surround the rocky towers, engines screaming and flaring as they drive in endless circles. 

Capable sits on the ground in the mouth of the skull, loading and unloading the rifle in her hands. It’s a repetitive motion - shell, chamber, bolt, eject...shell, chamber, bolt, eject - and the slide of the bolt is a steadying counterbeat to the roar of the engines below. The sun went down hours ago, and the angry flames from the engines make the shadows flicker and dance. 

Cheedo comes out of the darkness, sliding down the wall to lean on Capable’s shoulder. “What are they doing out there?”

“Nothing. Just driving around.”

She peers over the balcony, around the silent pump throttles. “Still? It’s been hours. We can give them water, if that’s what they want.” They’d turned off the pumps at the first sign of trouble. Don’t flaunt the wealth, Ace had pointed out, and even though Capable had protested, she’d lost. 

“They haven’t said what they want. I think they know Joe is gone.” Capable chambers the last shell and tucks the rifle next to her shoulder. “How’s Furiosa?”

Cheedo rubs at her eyes. “Sleeping. Mari’s with her. We found one of Rictus’s oxygen tanks. It seems like it’s helping, at least a little.”

“Do you think she’s going to die?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does Mari?”

Cheedo shrugs, worrying a fingernail. “I think Mari wouldn’t help if there wasn’t hope.”

Mari hadn’t helped in the Gigahorse. She’d provided commentary, but Max had been the one with the knife, the one with the tubing - Capable can’t think about it, can’t remember without feeling a sympathetic hitch in her own breath as his knife popped the bubble in Furiosa’s chest. “I’m scared,” Capable whispers. “It all feels like too much.”

“I know. Me too.” Cheedo snuggles closer. They sit together in the darkness, listening to the engines rev below.

 

****

 

Toast comes by later, bringing snacks and water. “Anything?” she asks.

“Nope.” Cheedo’s asleep on her shoulder, drooling a little, and Capable gently shrugs her off. She stands, her legs are stiff from sitting. “They’re still driving.”

“Ace has the War Boys ready,” Toast says, taking the rifle and automatically ejecting the shell. It’s becoming a nervous habit for both of them - chamber, bolt, eject. “They were pretty hungry for blood, but he talked them down, talked them into waiting until we find out what the Bullet Farmers want.” Her long fingers chamber a shell. She doesn’t have to say the Bullet Farmers are also hungry for blood; they were her people once, and she still remembers. “Plenty and the milkers have the workers deep inside. Pups are safe.”

“I need my sweater,” says Capable. “Want me to get you anything from the Vault?”

Toast shakes her head. Bolt, eject, shell. 

The halls are empty, the hydroponics dark. It feels strange and unnatural to have the Citadel so quiet inside. She’d argued hard to bring up the Wretched, but there wasn’t room for all of them, and the people below were huddled together away from the circling vehicles. They had a little water, at least, enough to last a day or two. Turning off the pumps felt like a betrayal, but she understood why it had to be done; she still didn’t like it. 

The Vault door is open a crack, and she slips inside. The dome is dark, the pool empty. An oil lamp flickers behind the closed curtain of the sleeping alcove, and when she peeks inside, she sees Mari curled around Furiosa on one of the beds, sound asleep. 

There’s another light in the kitchen area, and when she approaches, four skeleton-painted faces look up with guilty expressions. Jammer, Keno and two Repair Boys she doesn’t know are huddled around the communal table. Furiosa’s mechanical arm is neatly disassembled in front of them. 

“She is going to be pissed,” Capable points out quietly. 

Jammer looks horrified. “No no no no - not if she don’t find out. Look,” he says desperately, “Boss saved me, and she’s saved all of us, really, got us more water and everything, and-” he shoots a pained look toward the sleeping alcove- “it’s what we can do, right?”

“We want to fix what we can,” one of the Repair Boys points out, biting his lip. “It’s what we _do_. Fixed what we can for Ace’s Boys, but can’t fix nothing else with the engines roaring down below.”

Capable remembers Angharad’s rage at Nux, how all five of them had assumed all of Joe’s chalk-white slaves were brainwashed and only good for killing. She suddenly misses Nux fiercely, misses how much good he could have done, given the chance. All he’d wanted was to help, to please others, to make them happy. 

She comes and eases into the chair nearest Keno. “I’m called Capable,” she says.

The two Boys she doesn’t know look at each other. “Dab,” says one, while the other chimes in, “Ferrous.”

She smiles at them. “I won’t tell her if you won’t,” Capable says, picking up a tiny set of tweezers. “Now, how can I help?”


	26. Chapter 26

She wakes up and she’s drowning. 

There’s water in her lungs, hot and thick and choking, and when she tries to cough there’s no room to inhale. Her body panics, all her muscles contracting at once, and her human hand scrabbles at her throat, as if she can somehow claw holes in her chest to relieve the pressure and let in the air. 

Someone rolls her to her side, and then she’s coughing and vomiting into a bucket, Mari’s thumbs making hard circles in the back of her neck as she tries to catch her breath. 

“You’re all right. You’re all right.” The older woman sits calmly as Furiosa hangs between her knees, wretching and gasping. Her thumbs never stop moving, a pressure bordering on pain, and as long as Furiosa can feel Mari’s touch, she knows she’s not dead. 

When she can finally suck in a decent breath, she spits and shakily wipes the tears and snot from her face. She’s boneless with exhaustion; Mari pushes her gently back against the pillows, and Furiosa couldn’t resist if she wanted to. A gentle hand touches her forehead, her cheeks. 

“You’re still burning,” Mari says quietly. 

That doesn’t make any sense. She’s chilled to her bones, and every muscle aches. She remembers - something, scraps of sound and light, a disconnected sense of buoyancy, painfully cold and Capable’s voice, too loud and too angry. 

It’s all pieces and fragments, shifting sand that flows through her fingers before it forms a coherent shape. She’s pushing through the gears, but the transmission won’t catch, the engine keening piteously. She can’t remember why there are three pedals when she only has two feet, and her feet themselves are suddenly foreign objects somehow attached to the ends of her legs. 

She doesn’t realize she’s actually grasping for the gearshift until Mari covers her fingers with her own. “Where are you, Furiosa?” she asks, concerned brown eyes peering down. “Are you with us?”

She can’t say for sure. Mari is there, her face made of wrinkled linen and braided grass, but this is the Citadel, and Mari is Vuvalini, and besides, Katie’s her initiate mother, Mari’s initiate is...someone, a name that slips away. Why is Mari even here? She knows it makes sense, she _knows_ there’s a logical narrative, but it’s twisting around her like the wind, stripping away reason and mangling the timeline. It’s too hard to breathe, every inhale a stabbing pain and only half of what she needs. She grips Mari’s hand and tries to stay still, tries to find something solid as the world spins around her. Go to your core, Katie had told her, and for years she’d lived there, letting her body be driven like a vehicle until she’d forgotten she wasn’t a rig at all. 

“Can you drink?” Mari asks, offering up a mug. The contents are sharp and herbal and almost too thick to swallow, but she tries anyway, and it burns going down. The concoction sits heavily in her stomach, glowing and volatile. 

At some point, Mari leaves the room, pulling the thin curtain closed behind her. Furiosa is alone, curled up under blankets that are bruisingly heavy but do nothing to ease the shivering. Time is interminable, passing in runny clots like the heaviness she’s trying to eject from her lungs. She sleeps, or doesn’t, and if the shadows change she can’t track their positions enough to tell. 

She hears the familiar crack of a rifle shot, echoed by the shorter pop of pistol fire. She reaches under the dashboard - no, she’s in the Vault - she’s sweating and chilled and nauseous, Joe’s toxic seed won’t take, it never does-

More gunshots. Footsteps, scrambling. Voices raised in alarm. Then, “Furiosa! What are you _doing?_ ”

Going after the Bullet Farmer. He’s coming, and the Fool isn’t here. She needs someone to drive. 

And then Capable is holding her up as she sways. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

Furiosa coughs. “What’s...?” 

“Bullet Farm,” the former Wife says tightly. “Decided they didn’t want to trade for our water after all. They brought Gastown with them.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.” Capable is looking hard at her with a strange mix of wary concern. “Are you sure you should be up?”

The air is too thick and the ground isn’t solid, and she thinks she’s driving, but it feels all wrong. “Ace,” she says, because he’s on point. He’s in the back of the Rig, he’ll tell her how she’s doing. 

“I think he’s in the Garage Pillar,” Capable says doubtfully, “but I’ll see if we can find him. Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”

“No.” Furiosa straightens in a sudden wash of clarity. “I need a rifle. I need to see.” She can see the objection forming on Capable’s face, can feel the heat of the coming storm, but she cuts her off. “I’m fine.” Her voice is steel, the gears slipping into place with a relieved clunk. 

Capable raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t protest. 

The moment is gone as soon as it’s come, the transmission disengaging with a confused whine. Capable is looking at her expectantly, so she makes herself move forward, her feet as responsive as stones. 

Toast and the Dag are crouched below the - it’s a mouth, it’s where he controls the water, and then they’re turning to stare at her like they’ve never seen her before, and she almost looks over her shoulder to see if there’s something she’s missed. 

“What the fuck,” says Toast. “Fury, you look like shit. Capable, what’s she doing here?”

“She said she was fine!”

“Look at her, she’s barely standing!”

The women are shining with sweat, the dense air heavy with the afternoon. Furiosa is shivering, and the Dag comes and puts a blanket around her. “Does Mari know you’re here?”

“I’m not her initiate,” she says, and they’re confused, but they build her a nest of blankets and cast-off sweaters in the corner. The sun-warmed stone at her back is the best thing she’s ever felt.

“The Bullet Farm came in yesterday,” says Toast, and she looks so serious, but it’s called _the Bullet Farm_ , and why has Furiosa never realized how ironic that is? Growing anti-seeds in the middle of the lifeless waste. It’s the opposite of the Green Place, and she starts to laugh but ends up coughing instead. 

Toast blinks at her. “...and they spent all night driving around, spitting fire and trying to prove their dicks are bigger than ours. Joke’s on them,” she mutters. “Dicks are unnecessary. They’re just wasting their fuel.”

“Everything was quiet until noon or so,” Capable adds. “I don’t know if someone down there got jumpy or impatient, but they just started shooting at anything they can see.” 

“Gastown?” It’s a meaningless word that falls automatically from her mouth, but it means something to the women, because they look at each other and confer in a series of opaque shrugs.

“A dozen vehicles,” says Toast. “More arrived this morning. No tender.”

“Smegheads,” interjects the Dag darkly. 

There’s someone missing. Furiosa looks around. “Ace.” He was on the Rig - but the Rig is gone, she punched him, and he still came back. 

“I’ll go find him,” says Capable.

“Keep your head down,” Toast tells her. “Don’t cross the bridges.”

She nods. “I know.”

Furiosa sits and lets the heat of the wall seep into her back. She’s still shivering, tight little shakes that she can’t control, and the sludge in her lungs feels like it’s bubbling over. Her chest hurts from coughing, aching muscles tugging on her ribs with each breath. She doesn’t mean to close her eyes, but she’s not wearing her patch, and the vision in her injured eye is still haloed with glare and painfully sensitive to the midday brightness. 

The next thing she knows, people are shouting, and the rock above her explodes, sharp fragments raining down on her head and shoulders. It startles her - well and truly startles her - and then she’s gasping and retching because she doesn’t have the lung capacity for surprise. “Get her _back_!” someone yells, and then she’s being dragged out of the sun and into the dark. 

Capable is patting her down. “Are you hurt?” Her hands pass over Furiosa’s neck and face. “Oh, Furiosa. You’re still burning up.”

“F-fine. ‘M fine.” The words come out through teeth chattering with chills and shock. “What-”

“Climbers!” snaps Toast. “They’re shooting anchor bolts!” At the balcony, she raises her rifle and fires. 

Capable howls in frustration. “We’ll _give_ them water!”

The Dag shakes her head, and hands Toast a freshly loaded rifle, taking her spent one and easily slipping more shells into the chamber. “They won’t trade for what they can take.”

A Pup runs into the room, Ace immediately on his heels. “We got climbers on the Garage walls,” the War Boy grits out. “I got fifteen War Boys, and eight of them are running on empty. There’s too many of them down there for us to take out.” He looks down, as if noticing Furiosa for the first time. “Boss?”

“Save your bullets,” Furiosa rasps. “Don’t engage them.”

"Now is NOT the time for empathy!" shouts Toast.

"That's not empathy," says the Dag. "That's the sound of her brain boiling in her skull.”

“Boss says save ‘em, you SAVE EM,” bellows Ace immediately. “Who are we fighting? The fucking Bullet Farm, that’s who. We run out, they never do. So make ‘em count.” He drops down next to her, his powdery forehead pressed against hers. “Boss, you got a plan?”

He trusts her. He always trusts her. She’d consigned them all to death, speeding toward the dust storm, and he’d asked her why she couldn’t stop, as if mechanical issues were the only thing keeping the Rig from turning around. He’s looking at her right now with the same expression, the one that entrusts her with his life and all his experience, and the lives of all the Boys under him. 

“Cut the bridges,” she says. “Block every access. We go underground.”


	27. Chapter 27

The world is dangerously off-kilter. 

He’s not sure what’s going on, exactly, but the old Vuvalini has stopped talking, and is instead an invisible presence against his back, pushing him forward through the waste. He’s pretty sure Glory is trying to kill him; she blinks into existence scant feet before his front tire, and on instinct he swerves hard to avoid her, almost flipping the bike in the process. It scares the shit out of him each time, and his adrenalin is running so high her trailing echo of laughter only pisses him off. 

He’s completely abandoned any pretense of stealth and is instead running for speed. He pushes the bike hard, pausing only to dump in more fuel when he sputters to a stop. He chews the mystery-meat jerky as he rides, his body a hunched gnomon for the sun as he races into the west. 

He sleeps once. He has to; his body is stiff and exhausted, and the overworked bike is spitting steam and chugging uncomfortably. The Vuvalini makes a disgusted snort as he falls to the ground, and that _annoys_ him; she may not need to rest, but he’s still very much alive, thank you, with all the accompanying biological requirements. The old bird’s helped him find several really good supply caches, but that doesn’t stop him from finding her extremely irritating. 

“You _are_ a piece of work,” she’d once observed approvingly when he unzipped to take a piss. 

“Fuck off,” he’d growled, feeling himself shrivel under her dry scrutiny. 

She’d just grinned and run a suggestive hand up her rifle barrel. “I see why Furiosa wanted you to stay.”

He’d whined in frustration, willing his bladder to hurry the fuck up so they could get back on the road. It hadn’t worked to keep her quiet - her voice is in his head, not his ears, and no amount of roaring engine could block _that_ \- but now that’s she’s fallen silent and serious, he finds himself-

Nope. He’s not even going to _think_ that he misses her chatter. 

His body shuts down, but his brain is marinating in anxiety, both from the palpable tension and Glory’s damned slalom test. He doesn’t sleep well, disjointed dreams filled with Furiosa’s strained wheezing and the oily slick of blood coating his hands no matter how desperately he scrubs. 

He wakes up feeling hungover and dehydrated, his eyes as gritty as if he’d been facedown in the sand. “Up at at ‘em, boyo,” the Vuvalini says brusquely, and he takes a quick swig of water and hauls himself back on the bike. 

He doesn’t need to consult his map to know where he is. If he rides hard, he can be at the Citadel by sunset. The Vuvalini is pressing hard at his back, the triple rock towers pulling hard at his front like magnetic north. Somewhere behind him - half a day, maybe - are the remnants of Immortan Joe’s armada. There’s a deep, animal urgency drawing him back to the Citadel, to Furiosa, and he doesn’t question it. He just knows it’s where he needs to be. 

He’s strung out and exhausted, jittery from lack of sleep and the nightmares still clinging to his skin. There’s a ghost at his back and a ghost at his front, and he rides headlong into the west. 

_Help us, Max!_

_Why won’t you help us?_

****

 

Miss Giddy had told them the story of how Joe came to claim the Citadel. It wasn’t anyone’s favorite tale, not by a long shot, but their mentor had impressed upon them their need to know it. “He’s just a man,” she’d said. “He’s not a god; just a man who’s terrified of his own obsolescence.”

Capable has to admit, Joe had taken his victory and studied it thoroughly. He’d had thick doors of double-walled steel installed at every access point and at various junctions through the main halls. He’d had tunnels dug beneath the three towers, winding like the insides of termite mounds beneath the desert surface. He knew he had the upper hand by controlling the aquifer, and any invaders would perish in the waste before the denizens of the Citadel would even feel the strain. He’d made the Citadel as defensible as possible, an impenetrable fortress with failsafes and kill switches, all engineered to protect his absolute control. 

They retreat into the one place Capable has never wanted to be: Joe’s personal rooms. It’s the only place that provides a decent view of the chaos below while also being high enough to avoid the anchor bolts. Amy and Mari crouch at the window, sniping at the drivers below, while Toast and Dag reload their weapons. Cheedo’s down with the milk mothers, and the Pups and the War Boys are spread out through the various floors, ready to close the postern gates if any of the invaders happen to make it in. Ace is a pale dervish of energy and command, never still and never anything other than unassailably confident in victory. 

The room reeks of Joe, the stench of decaying old man and stale engine grease ingrained in the thick rugs and overstuffed cushions. It’s hard for all of them, to have that smell in their nostrils again, but it seems like it’s worst for Furiosa. She’s still burning up, coughing and shivering uncontrollably even when they’ve wrapped her in blankets and the circle of their own arms. When she’s lucid, she’s the bastion of command they’ve come to expect, but then the fever takes over, and Capable can see in her eyes that Furiosa knows Joe’s scent, knows the unbearable crawling stain of his touch. Ever since they realized Furiosa had been one of Joe’s Wives, Capable has always imagined her to be the same: a strong, proud warrior, someone who fought every breeding, maybe even bloodying Joe in the process. 

She doesn’t know what’s worse: knowing that she was wrong, that Furiosa had been just as helpless as they, or watching her relive it through the choking fog of her illness. 

“Can’t we cool her down?” Capable asks desperately. “Like Cheedo was - the pool-”

Amy shakes her head. “If those Bullet Farm boys get up that high, they’ll go through the glass in a second, if they haven’t already.” Toast had locked the Vault before they retreated further into the Citadel’s heights. “We can’t risk it.”

She wants to cry with frustration. “Can’t we do _something_?”

Mari pulls the trigger and hands the empty rifle to Dag. “Ever seen a banksia pod?”

Capable shakes her head. “Only in books.”

“Well. Back when there were lots of trees, great fires would start - sometimes by lightning, sometimes by humans - and the trees would be burnt to a crisp. Black. Dead. Scorched to bare earth. But the seed pods, they need the heat to open.”

She frowns. “I don’t see what this has to do with Furiosa.”

“Fevers are the body scorching out its enemies,” says Mari gently. “It’s harsh and it’s painful, but she’s burning because she’s fighting.” 

“But she’s hurting-”

“Out of the womb, everything hurts.” The words are an echo of Furiosa’s admonition of Angharad, but they’re said with such a sad kindness that Capable’s chest feels like it might implode. She’s from Gastown folk, the only blossom on a spindly, disease-ridden tree, but for a moment, she understands why, despite everything, Furiosa never quite gave up on getting home. 

The Green Place might be gone, swallowed by sour water and haunted by crows, but if it takes her last breath, Capable is going to turn the Citadel into such a paradise. The certainty burns inside of her like a fire consuming a banksia pod, a blazing redemption she never dreamed possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of feel like I'm being ridden by a demon the way this fic is progressing. Like, on the one hand, this is an incredible, transcendent experience, but on the other hand...I kind of need to do laundry, or vacuum, or, you know, sleep...
> 
> Regardless, it's totally worth it. I am the humble writer, unworthy of your praise, and in embarrassed gratitude, I'm just flinging out words in the hopes they'll make sense and you'll like them. 
> 
> I will be updating the tags in the next couple of chapters, so be forewarned.
> 
> Also: every time I hear/see the name Miss Giddy, I get [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIq1LvzSLsk) stuck in my head.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated. Ye be warned.

The mountains are a purple wall looming at his right, evening clouds a blue smear overhead. He’s made worse time than he’d expect; a particularly close call with Glory had upended the bike, and he’d lost precious time collecting the supplies that spilled off the back. He’d raged for a solid five minutes, kicking the ground with feral, wordless growls, all the while knowing deep down he can’t be mad at her, because she’s a kid, and kids fuck shit up, especially when they don’t mean to. 

_Help us, Max._

Relief surges through him when the lights on Gastown’s tall smokestacks blink into view. He’s close, so close, and he’s exhausted, his thighs and back aching from being hunched over the handlebars. He skirts the refinery, staying as far away as he dares. He’s been unnaturally lucky so far, somehow avoiding the bandits and highwaymen that inhabit this part of the waste. 

Even if he weren’t being driven by raging ghosts, he’s seen the Citadel at night often enough to know that something’s wrong. The three hulking mesas are black silhouettes against the fire-striped sky, ringed at their bases by flames that he knows aren’t being used for cooking. He cuts the engine and walks the bike up a ridge, using the scope of his rifle to scout out the situation. 

He recognizes the Gastown vehicles, and he’d bet water that the others are from the Bullet Farm. There’s no way the armada beat him here, so these have to be the defenders left behind. He counts seventeen vehicles and twelve bikes, but it’s too dark to know for sure. The refugees usually crowded around the mesas have moved further out into the waste, and through his scope he can see black shadows on the ground that can only be bodies. The Citadel is tightly shut, sealed off like a desert plant to prevent water loss, its neighbors crawling along its edges like thirsty ants seeking a weakness. 

He takes the bike back down the ridge and strips it of everything he can carry, stashing it between some rocks. It’s not a perfect disguise, but it’ll fool the casual onlooker. He stuffs his pockets full of spare clips and loose ammo, tossing a loop of rope over his shoulder. If he knows Furiosa, she’ll have taken her people as deeply inside as possible, waiting for the invaders to tire out from throwing themselves against the high stone walls. 

The wind picks up, stirring little tornadoes of sand as it rises. He pulls his scarf up over his face and adjusts his goggles. A sandstorm is exactly what they need right now, he thinks, to cleanse the Citadel like it cleansed the War Rig and aided Furiosa’s escape. He scans the horizon, but aside from high thin clouds and the ever-present oily smear from Gastown’s stacks, there’s nothing. 

The Gastown and Bullet Farm vehicles are mostly still, like malevolent snakes curled and waiting to strike. A few of them are circling the mesas in loud, aggressive circles, flaming their engines and spinning their tires. He’s not sure if they’re trying to intimidate the Citadel’s inhabitants, or simply advertising that they have guzzoline to waste.

“Rough lot,” murmurs the old Vuvalini, and he almost jumps out of his skin. 

He skirts the edges of the cars. War Boys - or whatever their equivalent is called - are lounging in knots, wrapped in blankets and rags against the chill of the desert night. “Been here two fucking days and nothing to show,” one of them gripes. “Place is a fucking fortress. We’ll never get in.”

“They’ll let us die down here,” another agrees mournfully. “S’posed to be our allies.” He spits. 

A third voice pipes up. “Grit says Boss has some big plan.”

Max eases closer, crouching in the deep shadows and doing his damndest not to breathe. 

“Fuck off, Widge. Grit’s alway saying.”

“No! This time it’s true! Grit said there’s two War Boys come from here last week. Said they was carrying news.”

One of the men snorts. “News? I got news. If we don’t get water soon, we’re gonna shrivel up worse than your balls - that’s my news.”

The third speaker whines. “No fair, Beekus. But ask Grit! He knows! He asked if we’d need lots of rope, and Boss said _no_.”

“‘Course we don’t need lots of rope, we got _chains_ -”

“Grit said it sounded like we ain’t climbing, though. Said the War Boys made it sound like there was another way in.”

“What, like a back door?”

The second voice mutters, “You’d be the expert at back doors.”

There’s a dull thump accompanied by a hard exhale, instantly recognizable as someone getting punched. Max moves away. 

He doesn’t know much about the Citadel, but he remembers the lift. At the time it had seemed like the only way in or out, but it makes sense there would be other entrances, either done as a deliberate part of the mesa architecture or as an accident of weathering stone. He’s guessing he has about eight hours until the armada shows up, and if the boys on the ground haven’t figured out how to get in by then, the ones showing up definitely will.  


Max scans the cliffs above. He thinks he might see the glint of a sniper rifle, but it’s hard to tell; the brightest light is from the flare of exhaust flame, flickering and sputtering in the black. He thinks of Furiosa, of her confident shot and her ability to knock a rider off a bike midair. It makes him feel slightly better, knowing that she’s up there somewhere, watching. 

 

****

 

The Bullet Farmers have stopped firing anchor bolts, and for awhile, the urgency to protect the Citadel has diminished. For a few hours, the defenders can rest, or catch up on work. 

“Where is everyone?”

Jammer looks up guiltily, then grins and lifts his face shield. “Oh, hey, Lug! Haven’t seen you in awhile!”

“Been busy.” The War Boy scans the empty Repair Shop, and ambles over to loom over Jammer’s shoulder. He stares at the mechanical arm. “What are you...is that Imperator Furiosa’s?”

“Don’t say it so loud,” Jammer hisses, looking around. “I was working on it up in the Vault, but I needed my welder-”

Lugnut frowns. “She’s in the Vault?”

“Yeah, they’re all up there-”

“All the breeders?”

Jammer rolls his eyes. “ _Yes_ , that’s why I’m-”

In one swift motion, Lugnut slams Jammer’s face into the table, grabbing the Repair Boy’s head and twisting hard. The wet crack of shearing cartilage is dampened by the closeness of the walls; Jammer’s body slides to the ground with a dull thump.

Lugnut steps over him and heads for the door. “Thanks. That’s exactly what I needed to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.


	29. Chapter 29

When Capable counts it off on her fingers, Furiosa has been sick for five days. They’ve been pouring Dag and Cheedo’s noxious herbal concoction down her throat, but as far as Capable can tell, it’s not making any difference. “How long does a fever last?” she asks Mari. 

The Vuvalini shrugs. “Until it’s done.”

Her assessment is practical, and not remotely comforting. Done could be mean anything, and there’s a finality to the word that Capable absolutely will not accept. 

The vehicles below stopped firing anchor bolts late yesterday afternoon. “None of them made it high enough,” Ace says, reporting in after a lengthy sweep. “None of the doors have been breached. The Vault’s dome is intact. We had a few Bullet Farmers try and climb into the lift bay, but those doors are still shut, too.”

Toast huffs. “Well, that’s a relief. I vote we move back to the Vault. I’m ready to firebomb this place.” Even after two days and an influx of sulfur smoke from the rifles, the room still smells like Joe, and it’s making all of them even edgier. 

“That’s the good news,” Ace says. 

Amy frowns. “What’s the bad news?”

“Bad news is we’re short on ammo.”

Toast crosses her arms. “How short?” 

“War Party took most of what we had. We’re down to dregs.” His fingers twitch as if he’s ticking off the list in his head. “Twenty-three lances. Fifteen grenades. Ten rifle magazines. Thirty pistol magazines. Ten semiautomatic magazines. Bullet Farm and Gastown were due a delivery for water, but we were due a delivery of arms and guzzoline.”

Mari shakes her head. “It’s bad for us, but worse for them. We can live without bullets. They can’t live without water.”

“They’re desperate,” says Toast. “And well-armed. I’d say they have a fighting chance.”

Across the room, Furiosa is coughing hard, and pushing herself up, batting away Cheedo’s attempts to calm her. “What day is it? What _day_?”

“Does it matter?” Mari asks gently. 

The look she gets could melt steel. “How _long_ have we been back?”

Fingers are consulted, frowns are exchanged. “Fourteen days,” Capable says. 

Furiosa closes her eyes and falls back against the pillows, the muscles in her neck cording with each breath. “They’re coming,” she rasps. “They’ll be here soon. We aren’t ready.”

“Who’s coming?” Cheedo presses a damp cloth against her forehead. “Furiosa, who do you think is out there?” She sounds lucid, but they’ve learned to be wary. 

“War Boys.” Furiosa coughs and hugs her stump against her chest. “The rest of the War Party.”

Understanding dawns in Amy’s eyes. “Two weeks around the wall of mountains. They’re due today.”

“They’ll be half-dead,” Toast says immediately. “No way they had the supplies for that.”

“They’ll be ready.” Ace lifts his chin, daring them to contradict him. “We may be half-life, but we know how to survive the wastes.” He looks over at Furiosa. “Some of my Boys did.” It’s not quite an accusation, but it’s close. 

It’s only been a handful of days, but already Capable has forgotten there are other War Boys, ones who might not be so easily turned, ones who didn’t follow Furiosa as reverently. She’s come to regard anyone powdered in white as an ally, a friend, and the time she’s spent with the Pups and the Repair Boys has helped ease the hole left by Nux’s sacrifice. She feels a little that with every Boy who finds redemption, she’s helping repay the debt she owes Nux, the debt they all owe him. “Will they see reason?” she asks quietly. “If we don’t have to fight them-”

Ace shakes his head. “Just because Nux helped you doesn’t mean the others will,” he says. “I’ve got a few years in my bones, and it’s helped me and my crew to stay on the road.” He looks again to Furiosa, and this time she meets his eyes. “Some imperators don’t look out for their crews. Some do.”

“Atrox and Capto are still out there,” says Furiosa. “They’ve got strong crews.”

“Strong enough,” he says, and somehow, that _is_ an accusation. 

“I was the one driving,” she snaps. “I chose to go off-road. It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“You never gave us the chance!” 

“Really?” says Toast. “We’re doing this now?” 

“I knew something was up,” the War Boy forges on. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know you’re not.” Her human hand clenches, eyes gone red with grief. 

“Before you even had the War Rig, you had us,” he says, and Capable realizes he’s not angry, he’s _hurt_ , and more than that, he needs to establish that Furiosa still trusts him. Whatever conversations the two of them have had, he still feels like she might be doubting him, and it’s eating at him as certainly as the tumors clustered on his back and shoulders. He already made the decision to trust her; he’d done that the day he came back, swallowing back betrayal to touch her forehead and call her Boss. Now he needs to know she’s done the same. 

“Do what you need to do,” Furiosa says. “That’s all I’ve ever asked.”

His jaw works, and then he nods. “And the others?”

Capable realizes he’s asking if he needs to kill them, the Boys he’s raised and trained. She thinks of the moment after Angharad’s death, when Cheedo tried to run, desperate for the perceived safety and familiarity of her gilded cage; if she hadn’t turned back, would Furiosa have shot her? How far would Furiosa have gone - or any of them - to protect their escape? 

_We keep moving._

That moment is fragmented like shattered glass in her mind, razor-thin and bright. If they’d turned around, they would have been caught, but if they’d turned around, Angharad might still be alive. Capable believes it in her heart, and the fact they drove away burns. Max saved their lives - saved all of them - but at that moment, she’d wanted to kill him. She’s still not sure he was right, that he wasn’t so focused on his own survival he’d lied about what he saw.

“Do what you need to do,” Furiosa repeats, and she suddenly looks haggard, deeply tired in a way that has nothing to do with the fever. 

Ace regards her for a moment. He seems almost sad, and Capable wonders if he’s wishing, just for a moment, for the simpler days, when there was no moral ambiguity, and the the hardest fight he’d ever had was against raiders or Buzzards. Then, he nods, once, sharp and decisive. “You got it, boss.”

“Wait,” says Toast. “Are we going to fight them? Are we talking? What’s going on?”

“They’ll have their chance,” says Ace, in a way that suggests he hasn't yet decided. “Right now, I need to get eyes on the road.”


	30. Chapter 30

In his assessment of the Citadel’s arms, Ace had neglected to include a headcount of his War Boys. He’d retreated as soon as he could, but Furiosa fumbles into Capable’s sweater and forces herself out of bed. She waves away Cheedo’s concern, and somehow convinces her wardens that a bit of fresh air will do her good. She can’t admit that every moment she’s here, she can feel Joe’s hands pressing against her skin, and in the wavering truth of the fever, she’s having an increasingly hard time separating delirium from reality. 

Part of her thinks she should at least attempt to makes the rounds, but fifteen feet out of bed, and she’s already wobbling. Furiosa looks Amy right in the eye and takes one of the rifles, slinging it across her back. The Vuvalini stares right back, but says only, “If you faint, do it where somebody finds you, mm?”

There are Pups running back and forth, delivering messages and supplies. There are probably more scanning the horizon and keeping watch. She passes a couple of Repair Boys carrying loops of wire and chain, and instead of joking when they see her, Keno goes still with concern. “Boss,” he says, “you all right?”

Their worried faces say she looks like hell. If she looks half as bad as she feels, their concern is probably justified. “Just going for a walk,” she says. 

“We can get someone,” he says carefully. “Not that you need. But if you did.” 

She knows she’s been hallucinating; Mari and Cheedo haven’t said so explicitly, but the way they gently question her makes it obvious that everything she’s said and done recently hasn’t always made sense. Has she been walking around in a fog as well?

“I’m fine,” she insists, as firmly as she can. “Have you seen Ace?”

Dab nods. “He’s up top.”

“Thank you.” 

Keno is still looking at her doubtfully, so she makes herself reach over and touch his arm, just a gentle nudge to set him back in motion. Her fingers come away powdery white. He startles at the touch, and then shakes himself. “Hey boss,” he says, almost an afterthought as he’s tripping away from her, “if you see Jammer, tell him we need him?”

“Sure thing,” she says, and the Boys amble off down the hall, loops of chain jangling like water. 

Heading up to the terraces is a daunting prospect, but she needs to talk with Ace, and so she goes. It’s not safe to take a lift, but ascending the stairs is slow even by her lately-amended standards, every breath too shallow and choked with phlegm. The stone walls shudder and converge, and she has to sit for a few minutes with her head between her knees, gasping and coughing so hard that when the stars dissipate, she’s vaguely surprised she’s only vomiting strings of desert-colored sputum, and not actual chunks of lung. 

Somehow, she makes it into the sunshine, every breath stabbing into her chest, and the heat of the desert at noon is refreshing after the damp cool of the stairs. She’s still shuddering with chills, and the air on the terraces is a heavy blanket that presses down on her shoulders. 

Ace is standing in the shadow of one of the windmills, arms folded as he scans the horizon. He’s got his mirrored goggles on, and when he turns, she can see the flat, golden expanse of the waste in the lenses. “Boss,” he says shortly. 

She drops down onto the ground - probably a little too fast, because he twitches like he’s prepared to catch her - and leans up against the windmill base. She can feel the subsonic thump of the blades as they spin, and the beat helps slow the pounding of her heart. 

They’re both silent awhile. Down below, the vehicles are quiet. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine there isn’t anyone else in the world, that’s she’s alone and for a moment, she almost doesn’t hurt. 

Ace finally lowers himself down next to her. “Could have sent a Pup to find me,” he says mildly. 

“I wanted to talk,” she says. 

“Gave my report.”

It was incomplete. They both know it. “How many War Boys do we have?” she asks. 

He doesn’t hesitate. “Fifteen.”

“How many can fight?” 

“Six.” 

She scrubs her human hand over her good eye. “And the others?”

“With the Pups, for now.”

She doesn’t ask if they’ll be okay. She knows better. If they were left behind, they’re too sick for war.

Furiosa doesn’t know the numbers of the Citadel like Joe did. She thinks there’s less than 300 people all told. Six War Boys, less than a tenth of their full complement, two deadly old women and four relatively untrained former Wives to protect the entirety of the Citadel. She is the Imperator - she should be strategizing, but she’s boneless in the shade of the windmill, the heavy air soaking into her feverish limbs. She can feel the delirium like a sandstorm lurking at the edges of her brain, waiting for the right wind to blow in and scour her thoughts into a featureless waste. 

If they had Max - 

Furiosa can’t wish for help. Wishing solves nothing. This is the world she’s made, created the second she cranked the War Rig’s wheel hard to the east. It owns her as certainly as Joe had. She doesn’t get a pass because she’s sick. She doesn’t get a pass for being weak. If she’d failed after being ejected from the Vault, she’d have died; if she fails here, everyone dies. There’s blood on her hands, blood from her crew, blood from Angharad, from Valkyrie and the other Vuvalini, from people who believed in her and trusted her. 

It hits her then like it hasn’t hit her before: she’s killed her entire clan. She’s been wandering around for two weeks silently mourning her lost mothers and sisters, but they were the last. 

_What others?_

_We’re the only ones left._

She’d let Max convince her to retake the Citadel, and they’d agreed, but they hadn’t understood what it meant to defy Joe. They couldn’t have known the fury of his anger. She should have warned them. She should have said no, told them all to ride in the hold, but she hadn’t, she hadn’t thought that far, and now the Vuvalini are down to two old mothers and one wayward, barren daughter. 

_What others?_

Furiosa had done it, gone to the open arms of her clan and then been the cause of their annihilation. She is Mary Jo Bassa’s daughter, murderer of the Vuvalini. 

She somehow staggers to the edge of the terrace and is sick behind a patch of green, the hard wrench of convulsing muscles against broken ribs an overwhelming blur of pain. She wants to scream, but she’s coughing instead, pressing her stump hard against her chest and retching as if she herself has been poisoned by the sour water of the Green Place.

When she comes back to herself, breathless and trembling, she sits up and scrubs away the tears and snot. Ace is still sitting on his haunches at the base of the windmill, inscrutable behind his goggles. 

He could question her fitness, but he doesn’t. He could comment that she’s wearing a gun when she probably has no business firing one, but he doesn’t. He waits for her to spit and collect herself, and when she’s sitting again, he doesn’t ask if she’s all right. If she needs something, he trusts her to ask. Otherwise, he lets her handle her own shit. 

She can’t say she’s sorry, because even after everything, she’s not. Joe was a cancer growing on the Citadel, malignant tendrils reaching out into the wastes to corrupt and steal. Furiosa is a tool, a weapon, a vehicle of destruction like the War Rig she’d once driven. It’s the purpose of a tool to perform a task, and she’s doing what she intended. She can’t ask for forgiveness, because that’s not what tools do. 

Furiosa looks over at Ace. “Thank you,” she says quietly. It’s the only thing that seems to fit. 

He nods, the barest hint of relief settling into his gnarled shoulders. 

She has no illusions that things are healed between them. She betrayed him, burned his crew, pushed him off the War Rig and left him in the desert to make his own way back. They’ll fight about this later, maybe forever. In the meantime, she’s still his Imperator, and he’s still her first. When he shouts, “Ready!” she’ll have her crossbow ready. 

She’s tired. The blood of her mothers is running down her arms and wrists, a fever still raging in her lungs, and the steady thump of the windmill blades is a drumbeat welcoming the delirium back into her brain. There’s so much to do, so much that depends on her, a seeping heaviness that soaks into her like water. She just wants to close her eyes and sleep. 

“Ready to head back down, Boss?” Ace asks. 

She accepts the offered hand. “Yeah. I am.”


	31. Chapter 31

Walking back down is measurably easier than walking up, but by the time they get down to the level where Joe’s rooms are, Furiosa can no longer deny it: she’s used 110% of her energy for the day, and it’s a hard struggle just to stay upright. 

“Gonna go check on the scouts,” Ace says. He pushes his goggles to the top of his head, giving her a sidelong glance. “You gonna make it?”

She waves off his concern. “Let me know when they see anything.”

He shrugs, and she’s almost positive he mutters, “Bloody stubborn bag of nails-”

Before, she might have thrown a punch - fondly, if not gently - but right now, she’s so tired, and so achingly grateful he’s _alive_ to give her shit that all she can do is sway a little as she stands, and stare at him with a stupid, wobbly smile. 

He rolls his eyes. “Go to _bed_ , Boss.”

Furiosa will never, ever hear the end of this. 

As far as she knows, the other women are still holed up in Joe’s rooms, but she just can’t make herself go back. She can’t stomach the thought of spending more time with his ghost rubbing against her skin and her deranged brain supplying his voice in her ears, so she turns around and keeps walking. She doesn’t have a destination in mind, just - not there, and it’s not until there’s cool metal under her flesh hand that she realizes she’s back at the Vault. How ironic, that this place that was once her cage is the one place she’s drawn back to, like a wounded animal seeking a dark hole in which to hide. 

They’d closed it off when the anchor bolts were being fired, but the guns outside are silent, the Bullet Farm and Gastown boys down below lurking resentfully in the shade. Furiosa spins the handle and lets the weight of the door walk her backwards, the cool air of the dome blowing out into her face. 

The Vault is untouched. She shouldn’t feel relief, but there it is. The air is freezing - or, she’s still chilled, her body intent on boiling from the inside out - so she snags a quilt from a nearby chair and curls up in the sleeping alcove, on the beds that are still pushed together and smell faintly of Cheedo’s repulsive herbal concoction. The room is quiet except for the faint whir of the ventilation. _We are not things_ , proclaims the wall, and she _misses_ Angharad. The Citadel is under siege, out-manned and out-gunned, and Furiosa is a shadow painted in gray and blood, but if Angharad were here, she’d somehow know the right words to say.

It was never supposed to end this way. Angharad was supposed to be their queen. Furiosa hadn’t really thought about her own role beyond driving to the Green Place - and why should she have, when she was just the vessel delivering the Wives to liberation. Now, Angharad is gone, the Green Place is gone, the Vuvalini are all but gone, the Wives are barricaded in Joe’s old rooms, and Furiosa has gone half-life and useless as they wait for the raging armada to crest the horizon. 

She thinks about crying, then. It seems reasonable, like something a person would do, but there’s nothing in her chest but the dull complaint of her ribs and the aching tightness of her lungs. When it comes to tears, she is as empty as Gastown’s cisterns. 

Instead, she coughs and shivers and lets the delirium slip over her head like a shroud. It’s easier to be a machine, to see the fever as a malfunction. Her intake lines are leaking, her filters clogged. She’s sucking air, but it’s not making it to her pistons. Her engines are blown, the cylinders cracked. 

This is what being half-life is. She suddenly understands the need to die historic, instead of lingering and watching as everything you are turns to sour water and slips away. She’s always tried to maintain a distance from the War Boys, knowing that every single one of them intended to die as soon and in as spectacular a manner as possible. Even the ones on her crew, even as she mourned, she’d consoled herself with the knowledge they were getting what they wanted - a quick death, a final blaze of fire. Even Ace, who has outlived two generations of his fellows, still has a sword hanging over his head, and she knows when he discovers a new lump, because he spends the next few days being even more scathingly terse than usual. 

She drifts in the twilight haze between sleep and wakefulness, thoughts skittering like insects on shifting sand. When she finally drifts off, she dreams of pale tumors, forming like mushrooms and erupting through the cracked and bleeding layers of her skin. They rise and burst, but instead of spores, they’re filled with fine, powdery ash that floats through her fingers when she tries to stanch it. The ash pours out of the cracks in her skin, a dense, choking cloud that she can’t wave away. She wakes up coughing and gasping, panic thundering hard in her chest. 

There’s a War Boy standing in the doorway, one hand holding back the thin, worn curtain. For a split second, they stare at each other, frozen. Silver drips from his teeth, his pupils blown wide and black. 

Everything happens at once. He lunges forward, bellowing, “Immortaaaaan!” and Furiosa propels herself off the edge of the bed, the downward thrust of his knife just grazing her arm. She hits the floor and rolls, scrambling toward the door and knocking a pile of Angharad’s books over as she goes. The War Boy rebounds off the far wall, using the mattress as a springboard and leaping after her. 

He hits the ground hard, a bare inch behind her feet, and grabs at her boots as she kicks him away. She feels her heel connect hard with his hand, the satisfying crunch of bone radiating up her leg. The War Boy howls, the knife clattering across the floor.

She makes it out into the main room, tearing down the curtain as she stumbles through it. The War Boy’s on his feet and then he’s on her, driving them both to the ground hard enough to knock her wind out. She remembers the rifle only when he’s grabbing it, the strap digging hard into her chest. It’s loaded but not cocked, and as she’s struggling beneath him, Furiosa hears the cold click of the bolt. She jerks her head to the side just as the War Boy pulls the trigger. 

The room spins, shockwaves from the shot reverberating through her skull. He’s already pulling another shell out of the magazine and pushing it into the chamber. She rears back, the back of her head smashing into his face, and he rolls to the side, blood pouring from his nose. Coughing hard against the stars in her eyes, she scrambles forward, grabbing for the rifle with her human hand and chambering the shell with shaking fingers. 

It’s _hard_ to hold the rifle without her mechanical hand, but she balances it on her stump and pulls the trigger. She hits the War Boy in the neck, and he drops back, hissing through a foam of red and silver. 

“Immortan...will...rise!” he gurgles.

“Joe is dead!” she grinds out. The magazine is empty. 

The War Boy grins like a rictus of death, bubbling red mingled with the white paint and black grease on his face. “His blood...is Immortan!”

Her ears are ringing from the shot, sparks dancing in her eyes. He’s up again, blood-slick fingers crushing her windpipe. She swings the butt of the rifle into his face, feeling bone shatter beneath the wood. His hands aren’t relenting, so she hits him again and again and again and again, cloying blackness throbbing up from her lungs. 

“Furiosa! _Furiosa!_ ” 

She realizes she can breathe again, great shuddering gasps that turn immediately into a paroxysm of coughing. She scrambles backward, choking and retching as her vision slowly returns. 

Cheedo is crouched in front of her, hands out as if she’s facing a wild animal. Amy and Toast have their rifles up, Ace close behind them with a loaded crossbow. 

“He’s dead,” Cheedo repeats, her voice echoing strangely. “Furiosa, he’s dead. He’s dead. Can you put the rifle down?”

Furiosa is spattered with blood, the butt of the rifle splitting and jagged. The War Boy is on the ground, his head reduced to an unrecognizable pulp of gray matter and shards of bone. When she looks up at the others, she can read the horror in their faces, and for a moment, the world spins. This is _not_ a fever dream. This is _not_ a hallucination. He was attacking her. She wasn’t imagining it. He’s not one of them, he’s not-

She’s still coughing too hard to speak, but the rifle drops from a shaking hand, and she crawls backward against the wall. 

Everyone starts talking at once, but their voices are a hollow blur. Her left ear is bleeding and deaf, a hot stripe of burned skin where the bullet grazed her scalp. Cheedo is reaching for her, and Furiosa tries not to flinch, but her body is flooded with adrenalin and overreacting to even the slightest stimulus. “Breathe,” Cheedo is saying, her face white, “keep breathing. Deep, even breaths. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

One of the dome’s glass panels is broken, a spiderweb of cracks surrounding the bullet hole. There’s blood congealing on the floor, dripping into the pool. It spools out with the current, an oily red slick dissolving in the water.

When she starts to come back to herself, Furiosa looks up at Ace. He’s prodding the body, turning it to examine the its scars. “Capto’s crew,” he says, pointing to the lance-shaped sigil carved into the War Boy’s shoulder. “Only one who stayed behind was Rocker, but this ain’t him.”

She coughs, trying to clear her throat, but it still feels like the War Boy’s hands are tight against her windpipe. “Strong,” she rasps.

“Who is he?” Amy asks. She’s taken up a defensive position between Furiosa and the door, ready to shoot if anyone else tries to come in. 

“Can’t tell. Just know he’s not one of ours.” He scrutinizes Furiosa, this twist of his mouth working angrily. His eyes dart from her ear to the blood on her face. She’s still breathing hard, her ribs encased in an iron band of pain. “Did he say anything, Boss? What did he say?”

She shakes her head. It’s all a blur, the nightmare bleeding into the attack, and her brain is thick with fog and ash.

“Where did he come from?” Toast demands. “I thought we’d accounted for everyone!”

“We did,” says Ace tightly. He adjusts his grip on his crossbow.

"He got in somehow," Cheedo points out, dabbing lightly at the cut on Furiosa's arm. 

"If he got in, others will follow." Scowling, Amy looks around the room. "The boys down below aren't going to wait to run out of water. We should strike first." 

Ace is already nodding. "I'll get everyone together. We need a plan."


	32. Chapter 32

When she first hears the shots, Capable goes running, first to cover, and then in the direction of the ruckus when Toast bellows, “ _A little help here!!_ ” She goes, heavy boots thudding urgently against the floor as she runs; she doesn’t know what she’s expecting to do - she’s got a rifle, and she can load it, but she certainly doesn’t have a hope of hitting anything. 

Whatever the situation, by the time she gets to the Vault, it’s already over. The first thing she sees is Cheedo carefully edging toward Furiosa, who is half-crouched against the far bookshelf and utterly drenched in blood. 

Furiosa sees Capable and holds up her human hand just as Amy rushes to turn Capable around. “This is not something you should see,” the Vuvalini says gravely. 

“I don’t-” but she sees it anyway, the chalk-white corpse in the center of the room and the smear on the ground where its head should be. Amy has an arm firmly around Capable’s shoulders and is pushing her back out of the Vault, but the image is burned into her retinas. Furiosa’s eyes are wild and she’s painted in blood like a raging feral, the War Boy’s head beaten to a glistening, liquid mash-

Before she even knows she’s puking, Amy has her bent over the drainage grate in the hallway, firm hands holding back her hair. 

Later, Cheedo will ask her quietly if she thought of Nux at that moment, and she will say truthfully that she hadn’t. All she’d thought was that somehow Furiosa’s ghosts had gotten the better of her, the violence of the waste splintering the Citadel as surely as Furiosa’s rifle had splintered on the head of the dead War Boy.

 

****

 

The Vault pool is filled with the War Boy’s blood, and Toast opens the drain and lets the red water swirl away. Cheedo helps Furiosa to her feet and between the two of them, they make it back into the sleeping alcove, where Cheedo slowly strips away Furiosa’s clothes and sponges away the worst of the blood. 

Furiosa is deeply shaken, more than she’d like to admit. Her bare skin pimples harshly in the cool air, and she grits her teeth to keep them from chattering. There is blood on her face, in her ears, in her hair. It’s sticky on her hands, already crusting on her knuckles, the red flakes dusting her knees when she clenches her hand. This is real, this is all real, she tells herself. He attacked. She defended. It’s not a fever dream. She didn’t just pulp an innocent Boy. 

Cheedo looks up at her, alarmed, and Furiosa realizes she’s spoken the words aloud. “This is real,” the former Wife confirms, and her eyes are so dark and earnest that it seems _too_ real, that of course Cheedo would be the one to see this violence, Cheedo the Fragile, Cheedo the youngest. Furiosa jerks away, shaking, and the movement catches Cheedo off-balance, and she tumbles backward. 

Distantly, Furiosa knows Cheedo isn’t hurt, that’s she’s only knocked her on her butt, but the delirium swells and all she can register is the blood on the girl’s hands, blood on her arms, the same blood that’s covering Furiosa. Panic rises like a flood in a dry riverbed, dark and fast and inescapable. It crashes over her head, her breath a sharp whistle in her throat. She’s trembling with the urge to fight, but she can’t - she knows she can’t, she’s just killed a War Boy, there’s blood all over Cheedo, she’s a weapon and she has to pull hard on the emergency brake and hope it holds as she roars ahead along the road. 

It could be minutes later, or hours. It’s impossible to know. She’s only conscious of being wrapped tightly in a thick quilt; Mari sits nearby, reading a book by the dim electric light. The old Vuvalini looks up when she stirs. “Are you here with us, Furiosa?”

Her tongue is swollen in her mouth, her lips cracking like old paint. “Cheedo,” she croaks. “I didn’t-”

“You didn’t hurt her,” Mari says firmly. “She’s more worried about you.”

Her pulse is a steady beat in her ears, as loud and insistent as Joe’s drummers. She can still feel her arms moving, the crunch of bone igniting a wild fire in her chest-

“Furiosa!” 

Her name in Mari’s mouth is a command and an admonition, a rebuke from an Initiate Mother, and the tone cuts right to her bones. She unclenches her human hand, feeling the stiffness that says it’s been clenched for hours. 

“I think,” Furiosa rasps, “I’m not...I don’t know what’s real.”

“Yes, you do,” Mari says sensibly. “You always have.”

“I’m _seeing_ things-”

The Vuvalini shakes her head. “Seeing something doesn’t make it real, girl. You know that. You think you would still be alive if you believed everything you saw?”

It’s one of the first lessons the Road teaches: shimmering desert does not mean water. Drive long enough, and the oasis changes back to bare sand. Furiosa is staring into a landscape peppered with mirages, and she has no map to tell her when the fever road will end. Mari is telling her if she wants to make it through this, she’s just going to have to keep on driving. 

It’s classic Vuvalini encouragement, like rubbing hard against a clenched muscle. Furiosa is a tightly-bound knot of pain, and Mari just keeps pressing her thumb into her core. 

“The others?” Furiosa asks.

“They’ve been talking,” Mari says. “But I think they’re waiting for you.”

 

****

 

By the time the sun came up, Max had scouted the entirety of the Citadel. He’d cut the brake lines on any vehicles he could, sabotaged fuel tanks and oil lines, and stolen ammunition while its owners slept. Seven of the pursuit cars are rigged to explode on ignition; he could have done more, but he’d run out grenades. He’d slashed tires where he could, and on the one he couldn’t, he’d positioned rifle bullets to puncture the rubber as soon as the vehicle rolls forward. 

Mostly the vehicles are still. The Gastown and Bullet Farm boys have been told to heel by their masters - it’s obvious they’re waiting for something. Every time one of them goes off to take a piss, Max is right behind them, a silent shadow watching, waiting, for one of them to try and slip into a hidden entrance. 

There is no sign of the armada. He’s sure they were only twelve hours behind, but there’s nothing on the horizon but the frisson of heat amid the heavy air. It’s late afternoon, the sun crawling across a sky streaked with purple and gray. In the west there are thunderheads forming, distant castles slowly wending their way inland, long blue fingers stretching down into the sand.

He sleeps in fits and snatches, the sultry afternoon reaching into the crevice where he’s wedged his body. He watches the vehicles, and he watches the horizon, and he watches the rain clouds that won’t come.


	33. Chapter 33

It’s early evening, hours since the fight, and Furiosa _hurts_. She’s grown accustomed to the sharp stab of her ribs and the dull ache in her chest, but now her knee and her human arm have decided to join the cacophony. She’s still shaky and strung out from the fight, and the relentless press of the fever has ground her tolerances down until even the simple act of putting on a shirt is an overwhelming and frustrating task. 

Mari is unflappably patient, disappearing while Furiosa dresses and returning with yet another mug of the herbal brew she’s coming to despise. Furiosa is fully prepared to snarl, but Mari just folds her arms and gives Furiosa a look that says while being sick is acceptable, whining is not. 

She slugs it down, and briefly considers throwing up. 

The women are waiting for her in the mouth of the skull, the pumps faithfully working in the background. Ace and Keno are standing to one side, and she immediately knows something is wrong by the way Keno’s holding himself so stiffly, like he’s falling from a great height and hasn’t yet hit the ground. 

“What is it?” she says. 

“Boy’s name was Lugnut,” Ace says. “Capto’s crew, like we thought. Pups said he’d been assigned as Corpus’s hand after the last raid.”

Toast glowers. “I thought we’d killed all of Corpus’s Boys.”

“If you’d left any of them alive, they might have _told_ you there was another,” flares Capable. 

“They attacked _us_ -”

“Enough,” Furiosa snaps. “So he was with Corpus. Was he hiding in the Citadel?”

“Hard to say,” Ace admits, his lopsided frown deepening. “Pups haven’t seen him since Corpus jumped, and then he showed back up yesterday. It looks like he might have snuck back in through the garages.”

“Why do you say that?” asks Toast. “I mean, there’s plenty of spaces to hide.”

Ace’s expression is carefully blank. “Jammer found him first.” 

Keno makes a strangled noise like he’s swallowing back a scream, the burning need for murder leaking from every pore. 

Capable’s hands fly to her mouth, and Dag’s arms go around her. “Is he…?”

Ace regards her with the sort of resigned sympathy the world-weary have for the naive, and his fingers lace together like the cylinders of a V8.

“Fuck,” says Toast, and then she’s screaming through the skull’s teeth, “FUCK!” 

Capable is reaching for Keno, pulling him into Dag’s embrace, Toast shouting expletives down at the vehicles below. Cheedo hugs herself and wipes at her eyes, and Mari and Amy stand to the side, implacable. The sound of grief buzzes at the edge of Furiosa’s senses, and it all feels very far away. 

“Gastown and the Bullet Farm,” she says. “He wasn’t here until they were. You’re sure?”

“Pups say so,” says Ace. 

Deep in the fevered recesses of her brain, it makes sense. The deep bay for the lift platform is a necessary weakness, and even though she’d ordered all the doors sealed, a high-ranking War Boy wouldn’t have been seen as suspicious. 

Capto ran his crew with an iron fist. Although he’d been an Imperator much longer than Atrox, he’d been passed over for Prime when Caputalis had been killed; Capto had just lost half a raiding party to an unfortunate Buzzard attack, and Joe had never been particularly forgiving. Determined to prove his worth, Capto had started running his crew ruthlessly hard; if Lugnut had been chosen to stay behind and act as Corpus’s hands, it meant the War Boy was one of Capto’s best, his most trusted. He would not have taken kindly to Furiosa’s return, and the fact they’d killed the rest of Corpus’s guard would have just exacerbated his anger. 

She wonders, then, if Lugnut had pushed Corpus out of the window, and then somehow snuck off to rally Gastown and the Bullet Farm. Was he trying to set Capto up as the Immortan presumptive? Joe’s sons carry the touch of godhood in their blood, but they don’t inspire the same devotion as their father; in the power vacuum left by Joe’s death, Capable has stepped up, but Furiosa has been too preoccupied - first with maintaining the water supplies, then with her injuries and subsequent illness - to support her as she should. 

This is an attack, not just on Furiosa, but on the Citadel as it stands. Lugnut was making a bid for control, and she doesn’t care if it was on Capto’s behalf or in memory of Corpus. If they don’t make a stand now - right now, when the blood is still wet on the stone - they’ll be seen as weak, a target ripe for plunder. 

The day before their escape, Angharad had cornered Furiosa. “Whatever happens,” she’d said, “there will be no unnecessary killing. Do you understand?” She’d spoken with the confidence of a queen, the divine self-assurance that had lead Joe to call her Splendid. 

“I will make no promises,” Furiosa had growled. She is a weapon, honed to a razor edge. She will do what others won’t, if it means making it through the day. 

Angharad had set her jaw. “We are not animals that rip each other to shreds at the slightest provocation. We have control over ourselves, and we _will_ show mercy.” 

Now, Angharad is gone, crushed beneath Joe’s tires, and Furiosa is a seething maelstrom of anger, pain and grief. She is half a breath away from snapping completely, going utterly feral and sinking her teeth into the nearest fleshy limb, regardless of whose it is. Mercy is a luxury she absolutely cannot afford, and even if she could, she is feeling so far from merciful the word has almost lost its meaning. Her people have been assaulted, and she craves the taste of blood in her mouth so hard she’s shaking. 

“Get the body,” Furiosa grinds out, the white-hot spread of rage blooming deep in her core. “Then bring me some rope.”

“We should talk with them,” Capable snaps. “We shouldn’t stoop to their level!”

For one tense, dizzying moment, she’s afraid she’s going to hit the former Wife, and then equally afraid she _won’t_. “Actions speak,” she makes herself say. 

Mari is already nodding, her hands tight on her rifle and ready for violence. “Now comes the rebuttal.”

 

****

 

Max is huddled on a narrow ledge, wrapped in rags and trying his hardest to blend in with the stone. His previous nocturnal antics have been both successful and very poorly received, and if any Wretched had been left in the area, the Bullet Farmers would have slaughtered them in indiscriminate rage. To make matters worse, he thinks the warriors on the ground have run out of water. They spend the day trying to crawl up the stone walls, and looking back over their shoulders at the rain clouds that hover tantalizingly on the horizon. The heat of the day presses down. 

He’s getting desperate himself. He’s been rationing his own water, sneaking back to his hidden bike when he can, but he’s down to a single liter, and he hasn’t pissed in a day. 

Around sunset, something happens in one of the towers, and from the grinning death’s head, something drops, suspended from a stone tooth and dangling above the sand far below. There is no announcement, no accompanying commentary on the loudspeakers he knows are installed above. He shudders at the memory, the sharp whine of remembered feedback piercing through his bloodloss-induced daze as he dangled from the ceiling like a slap of meat. He’s almost positive the thing being dangled is a human body, but in the burgeoning darkness, it’s hard to tell. 

The warriors below are preoccupied with the state of their vehicles, and don’t notice anything amiss. It’s a cold night, the wind picking up on the leading edge of the storm that’s been lingering in the west. If he watches closely, he can see brief flashes of lighting, clear and white in the darkness. The old Vuvalini grumbles, but he doesn’t dare move, not even in the dark. He tries to sleep, but he dreams of Furiosa’s mechanical arm wrapped around his neck, of the dead golden-haired Wife pulling hard on his chains, her voice echoing in the black cavern of his skull.

_Who killed the world?_

_Was it you?_

_Where are you?_

 

****

He’s startled awake by the furious roar of engines and howls of outrage. The sun isn’t even over the tops of the mountains, but there’s enough light that the warriors below have noticed the body hanging from the skull’s mouth. 

Max shakes off the cold fingers of the nightmare, and lifts his binoculars. In the orange-tinged sunrise, the body is pale white against the yellow stone. It’s been decapitated, its upper limbs smeared in ochre and brown in a testament to the violence of its death. Already, a flock of eager crows have settled on its limbs. 

He doesn’t quite understand why the crowd from Gastown and the Bullet Farm would be so upset about the death of what is obviously a War Boy, but then he remembers the conversation from two days ago, when the Bullet Farm boy mentioned War Boys coming with news. 

“Maybe a traitor was caught,” the old Vuvalini murmurs next to him. 

It’s impossible to know if the traitor was for or against Furiosa. He’s hoping she’d been the one to kill him, but if this was an ally…

He has to get in. He has to figure out what’s going on, and he has to find Furiosa. He can feel the urgent press of his ghosts in the back of his skull, pulsing like an aneurysm. 

Sometime in the night, the clouds have swept closer, bringing with them the dense heat and fire-colored sky of a promised storm. The War Boy’s body sways in the quickening breeze, dislodging crows as it bumps against the stone. 

_Is that a curious vexation?_ The golden-haired Wife is suddenly loud in his ears, an alarmed hitch in her voice. _Is that just the wind?_

The old Vuvalini snaps, “Look alive, boy!” 

Max turns to the east, and sees a new cloud on the horizon, one that isn’t heavy with rain. 

The armada has finally arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 42k words and 10k hits!!!! I can't believe it. None of this would be possible without you. THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your support! I love you all. 
> 
> I know I've slowed down a bit over the last few days, but I promise I'm still going full steam ahead on this, as fast as Real Life will allow.


	34. Chapter 34

Hours after Furiosa and Ace strung up Lugnut’s body and hefted him over the edge of the gap-toothed balcony, Capable is still hounding them. 

“He was a _person_ , not a _thing_ -”

“He is a thing,” Furiosa snaps. “He’s a message.”

“He’s a human being,” Capable shoots back. “He’s not a threat to us, not when he doesn’t have a _head_.”

“‘S what he stands for,” Ace interjects. “Boys below need to know we don’t tolerate traitors.”

Capable is pale with fury, her hands clenched hard at her sides. “We. Are. Better. Than. Them,” she grinds out, and whirls on Furiosa. “You said that. You told me to be better, but the moment we have the opportunity to show mercy-”

“We don’t have time for mercy.”

Capable’s eyes glitter. “How we treat our dead-”

Furiosa whirls on her. “That _thing_ out there-” she stabs a human finger at the balcony, at the dead War Boy hanging from the stone teeth, “is a corpse. The Boys down below might waste something like that, but we don’t have that luxury. You wanted freedom? This is how you keep it. You have fight for it, every second, every breath.”

Capable shakes her head. “Not this way. This is barbaric.”

“Blood is the language everyone understands.”

“You’re mad, you’re fever-mad-”

“Didn’t I tell you everything hurts? It’s not just about wounds. It’s about what you’re willing to do to survive.” She gestures to her stump. “It’s about what you’re willing to sacrifice.”

Horrified eyes flick over the truncated limb, then back up. “Furiosa...”

“You do it,” she says grimly, “because it gets you through another day.”

“We’re in control here,” the former Wife tries. “We don’t have to go that far.”

“No. _You_ don’t. You’ve never had to.”

“I’m trying to change things!” Capable is practically in tears, shaking with rage and frustration.

“And _I’m_ trying to keep us alive,” Furiosa spits. “If that means raiding, I’ll raid. If it means killing, I’ll kill. And if that means hanging a corpse above the Waste to let those bastards know they can’t have this miserable pile of rock, I’ll do it and have no regrets.” 

Cheedo interjects, with wide eyes, “What about redemption?” 

The room is suddenly too small, the walls pressing in and getting closer with every aching breath. “There’s no redemption,” Furiosa says quietly. “Not for people like me.”

Capable shakes her head. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s not for you to believe. It just is.” The air is choking her, and she just needs to get out. Grinding her teeth, she looks to Ace. “The corpse stays.”

He nods, his crooked lips quirking in humorless agreement. “Got it, Boss.”

On her way out the door, she hears Capable stamp her foot. “You’re just - walking away? You can’t _do_ that. You can’t! We’re better than this! We’ve gotten this far, and you’re just - agh, you’re not just a bag of nails, you’re the whole fucking _truckload_!”

Furiosa almost laughs at that, because Capable has no idea how close she is to the metaphorical truth. 

 

****

 

A storm is coming. Furiosa can feel it in her bones. The Bullet Farmers will notice the hanging body, and do whatever they can to retaliate, and she’s going to be ready. She doesn’t know if it’s grandiose fever dreams or just exhausted determination, but part of her is relieved it’s come down to this. 

She tries to sleep, but she can’t get comfortable; when she’s lying down, she can’t breathe, and when she’s sitting up, she feels every place where Lugnut hit. After hours of miserable tossing and turning, she finally gives up, and goes to clean her gun. 

Her rifle butt is splintered wood and gummy with blood and hair. She sits on the edge of the pool in the Vault, wiping the stock with a damp cloth. The weapon is broken, but not unusable; she can’t fix the damage, but she can make sure it still fulfills its purpose. 

If she’s very lucky, it will survive to be used again. 

Mari comes and eases herself down, bringing with her a bowl of porridge and a mug of Cheedo’s acrid herbal glop. Furiosa has no appetite, but, resigned, she takes the mug and swallows its contents in one long draught. She can’t tell if it’s working - she’s still shivering and dizzy, her chest aching with each breath. It doesn’t seem possible that she has any innards left at all, but she’s still coughing up an impossible volume of thick, bloody phlegm. 

“Give it time,” Mari says, as if reading her thoughts. “People die from less. You’re still with us - that’s something.”

Time. They don’t have time. The armada will be on them at any moment, the Gastown boys and the Bullet Farmers are circling below, and Furiosa feels like she hasn’t slept in a thousand days. She’s spent years maintaining herself, fixing her own arm, repairing her own engines, and it’s gotten her nowhere. Her reserves are empty, and she is still shifting up, flooring the accelerator and careening ahead full speed. She doesn’t know what the end will be like - if it will be a fiery, historic crash, or just an inevitable, chugging stop - but she knows it’s coming. Even engines can’t run forever. 

She doesn’t know how many other War Boys are out there, either down with the Bullet Farmers or lurking here in the Citadel, waiting for their moment to strike. She doesn’t feel betrayed; how can she, when she’s the one who upended the system, she’s the one with the blood still crusted under her fingernails. 

“Capable will come around,” Mari says. “She’s a tough girl.” It’s high praise, from a Vuvalini, but at this point, ultimately useless.

“It doesn’t matter if she comes around,” Furiosa mutters. “It doesn’t change what needs to be done.”

Mari’s expression softens, and she reaches for Furiosa’s hand, interlacing their fingers. “These girls are deciding who they are,” she says. “You’re a warrior, and that’s fine, but don’t forget that you’re a mother, too.”

Furiosa shakes her head. “No. I’m barren, I can’t-”

Mari gives her hand a shake, annoyed. “Don’t be dense. Have you forgotten everything? Since when has being a mother ever been limited to the contents of your own womb?”

Furiosa is a vehicle. She was Joe’s vehicle until that moment she turned her wheel, and she’s been driverless ever since - but that’s wrong, she’s been her own driver, she is a person, she is not a thing, none of them are. 

She can’t be a person. She doesn’t have time, doesn’t have the wherewithal to feel that much emotion. It’s so much easier to shut it all down, to let the person she might be just crawl into that deep, safe place like the Wives crawled into the hold of the War Rig. That way, she can just be the driver, just be the vehicle. She can open up the throttle and do what she does best - surviving - without the messy business of having to decide if her actions are wrong or right. 

Mari is looking at her expectantly, but Furiosa has nothing to offer. 

Ace appears at the Vault entrance, his crooked body curving like the tunnel itself. “Boss,” he says. “Thought you’d want to know: scouts just spotted the War Party on the horizon.”

It should frighten her, but it doesn’t. All she knows is that the waiting is over, and it flows through her body like feral high-octane. 

Furiosa cocks the rifle. The stock is still damaged, but the bolt action is smooth and ready for war. 

“Good,” she says. “Let them come.”


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter before the action ramps up.

Two of the sicker War Boys have died in the night, leaving them down to thirteen, only six of whom are strong enough to fight. There are seventeen rifles and seven magazines. 

Amy trails her fingers through the box, the shells clinking together like jewelry. “No way we’ll be able to snap all of them.”

Mari looks down her sight. “We don’t have to snap all of them, just the big ones.”

The other Vuvalini chuckles. “With our luck, they’re all going to be big ones.”

The War Party is still thirty minutes out, a rising cloud of dust twenty-six degrees southwest of Gastown’s smoky towers. The sun has just crested the continental wall, a thick flare of light amid the bruise-colored sky. Furiosa struggles into clothes she hasn’t worn in fifteen days, her ribs protesting hard as she laces up her leather girdle. She finds a pot of grease and the little silver mirror where she’d first seen how badly damaged her eye had been, and with practiced motions, she swipes a thick coat of black from her hairline to the bridge of her nose. It hides the greening bruises, the blue circles beneath her eyes. She looks like herself, an Imperator, dangerous and in control. 

Ace reappears with Keno and some of the other Repair Boys on his heels. They’re all freshly daubed with white, slick glistening black surrounding Ace’s eyes. Keno has bundle of dirty cloth in his arms, and a severe expression. 

“What is it?” Furiosa asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Found this with Jammer,” Keno says, and thrusts out the bundle. “Wasn’t done, but...some of us finished it last night.”

She lifts the worn fabric, and it’s a machine arm. A _new_ machine arm, fabricated from scraps she recognizes and some she doesn’t, all constructed with a mechanic’s eye for function and an artist’s eye for detail. The pauldron is matte black steel, subtly acid-etched with curling vines and leaves, the leather straps burnished to a soft shine. Every actuator and rod has been carefully tooled to ensure each piece interacts seamlessly with the others. Instead of a single knob at the pauldron, there are two.

“That one gives you more mechanical advantage,” Keno says, gesturing to the one closest to the shoulder. “The other controls the precision movement of the digits."

Furiosa lifts the arm in a daze, slipping it over her stump. It’s not nearly as heavy as her old one, the padding layered to prevent sand from filtering down next to her nub. With shaking fingers, she fastens the straps, her throat burning. It’s the most beautiful piece of machinery she’s ever seen, and she’s struggling right now - really, truly struggling - to believe this isn’t a fever dream, that this is real. 

“We used some fancy metals,” Keno continues in a nervous rush. “Lighter. Stronger. Immortan’s not here to say how we prioritize repairs, so...”

She can’t speak. Her throat is too tight, and all she can do is run her human fingers over the delicate vines on the pauldron. 

Maz scuffs his foot. “Wanted to put something green on it, on account of how you’re making sure we’ve all got enough water.”

Water. All she knows is that there’s too much water, and it’s flooding her vision. She doesn’t deserve their loyalty, any of them. 

Ferrous pipes up, “Was gonna put a boltcutter symbol on it, but then Capable told us how you're trying to make this a good place for green, so we did leaves instead.”

The fingers work perfectly, and she can _feel_ how the power changes when she adjusts the knobs, how the arm goes from crushing strength to minute precision with a slight adjustment. Furiosa is overexposed like a bare nerve, tears streaming down her face, too many emotions to name swelling past capacity in the blown-out cavity of her chest. 

“Boss?” says Keno tentatively. 

She can’t speak, so instead she presses her forehead against his, hard and long enough to leave a smear of black. One by one, the others come forward, and she marks them in the same way, until she wears an oval of white, rippled like the full moon on a midnight lake. 

She can’t say thank you. She can’t say anything. Her eyes are burning from the grease and the tears, and there’s not enough air in the room for breathing. Ace rescues her, saying roughly, “Right, you lot. Get moving,” and the Repair Boys scatter, grinning and sniffling and murmuring to each other _that was so completely chrome_. 

When they’re gone, she sits for a moment and runs her fingers over the smooth metal joints. She’s aware of the approaching armada like a second heartbeat, but - she just needs a second, to cough and breathe and try to gain control over the hot moisture still blurring her sight. 

“Boys mean well,” says Ace, unnecessarily, and she can only nod. 

When she can talk, she coughs and tries to clear her throat. “I don’t know why you’re still here,” she admits, and gestures to her beautiful new arm. “Any of you. You shouldn’t - I don’t deserve this.”

He sits down next to her, his twisted shoulders rolling into a shrug. “I don’t pretend to understand why you chose as you did,” he says, “but you’re the boss. You got reasons.”

“What if they’re not good reasons?” It comes out as a hoarse whisper. 

Ace’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Don’t matter to us. We’re following. You get us through. You always have.”

She has to press her human hand into her eyes again, to stem a fresh flood of tears. “Today’s going to be hell,” she tells him. “It’s going to be bloody.”

He shrugs again, his lopsided mouth twisting up in a feral grin. “No worries, right.” He offers her a hand. “You ready, boss?”

Furiosa dabs at her eyes, flexing her prosthetic into a comfortable fist. “Ready.”


	36. Chapter 36

With her forehead black and her beautiful new arm on her shoulder, Furiosa feels more powerful than she has in days. Her chest aches and the world is at once muddled and overbright, but there’s a dizzy lightness that she loves, the heady rush of toeing the sharp precipice of battle. She’s standing in the mouth of the skull, Toast and Amy to her right and Ace on her left. Wordlessly, she passes the pot of grease to Toast, and the former Wife draws a fierce, coal-dark stripe across her brows. 

“One man, one bullet,” says Amy. 

Ace grunts, approving. 

There are at least thirteen War Pups on the cusp of maturity who have been clamoring to earn their grease, and Capable and Toast have been arguing for _days_ about the boys’ combat responsibilities. Capable finally gave up, and she’s standing in a circle of chalk-white faces, her shock of red hair bound up beneath a scrap of Vuvalini fabric. “There are too few of us to lose anyone,” she’s saying to the Pups, who are listening with rapt attention. “Today is not a day to die historic. Today, you need to live. Do you understand?”

One of the taller ones nods. “Immortan closed the gates of Valhalla.”

“We follow the Boltcutter!”

“Imperator Boltcutter!” They all turn to grin at Furiosa. 

It’s not what Capable wanted, and there is protest rising in her face, but Furiosa ignores it. “Your job is defense,” Furiosa says to the Pups. “They’ll try and scale the walls, and you need to make sure they don’t. Cut their ropes, dislodge any anchors. Keep your signal mirrors ready. Retreat if you’re in danger,” she stresses. “We have water. They don’t. There’s no need to risk yourself recklessly.”

The Pups grin. They’ve grown up on the walls of the Citadel, dangling from ropes and wires as if gravity were no consequence at all. She doesn’t think it’s occurred to any of them yet that it’s not just Gastown and the Bullet Farm they’ll be fighting against, it’ll be against their brothers, their mentors, War Boys they’ve known their whole lives. 

Furiosa looks at Ace, his mirrored goggles implacable, and forges ahead. “There will be War Boys there,” she says, “ones you know. They may not accept that Joe lied to them.”

“Like Lugnut,” says one of the Pups darkly. 

“He _killed_ Jammer!” says another one. “He traitored all of us!”  
She should have guessed that Lugnut’s attempted coup would be common knowledge. Without Joe and the other Imperators to control the flow of information, the Citadel had no secrets. “Like Lugnut,” Furiosa says. “They may try to hurt you. That’s why you need to try and stay out of range.”

The grins have disappeared, and the Pups nod soberly. 

“Keep ‘em off the rocks, you’ll earn your grease today,” says Ace, and claps his hands. “Move out!”

Before they leave, they come to Furiosa, and she knocks her forehead against each of theirs, marking them with a smear of black, and being marked with white in return. When the Repair Boys had appeared marked with her grease, the remaining War Boys had immediately come to pay their respects as well. Even Ace wears a dark shadow above his goggles, although he’d seemed almost embarrassed by the action. 

Furiosa has split the War Boys up, two per pillar, and kept the Vuvalini and the former Wives back in the pillar with the pumps. Pups stand ready with signal mirrors, and if any of the pillars are compromised, Furiosa has a flare gun at her hip, ready to call everyone back to the main tower. Dag and Cheedo are with the milkers, preparing bandages and stockpiling supplies; Mari is in Joe’s old rooms, the former warlord’s opulence turned into an austere Vuvalini sniper nest. The Repair Boys are prepped and ready to do quick repairs to blast doors and utilities. 

The Wretched below decamped immediately upon the arrival of the Bullet Farmers and the Gastown boys, retreating into the desert. It’s been six days since they’ve arrived. She’s sure people are dying of dehydration, but she can’t think about that. If she can’t hold the Citadel, no one will have water. 

Furiosa lifts her binoculars to her eyes. There are twelve vehicles and four bikes in the coming armada, a motley assortment of various pursuit vehicles accompanied by the salvage trailer, which is loaded to capacity. The Gastown and Bullet Farm boys below have noticed their incoming brethren, and the vehicles that can are riding out to meet them. She’s not sure who’s responsible for sabotaging all their equipment, but whoever is doing it knows their way around a car; from Ace’s reports, more than two thirds of the vehicles at the Citadel’s base have been rendered inoperable. 

At first, she’d thought - just for a hopeful, foolish second - that it was Max down there, taking care of the cars the way he’d taken care of the Bullet Farmer, but that’s an idle fantasy and she can’t waste energy entertaining it. Max had come back after the Bullet Farmer only because he’d needed the War Rig to carry him in his escape. If someone down below is helping them, they’re doing it for their own reasons, and Furiosa doesn’t have time to analyze their intent. If they’re here to help - she’ll accept it. If they’re here because they think they might win the water for themselves, well. 

This is the battlefield she’s chosen, and it’s utterly hopeless. She knows this. She’s already decided that this is where she makes her stand, that she will be dead before she lets anyone take the Citadel, but there’s water here in the middle of a vast desert; even if she managed to push Gastown and the Bullet Farm back, there will be others, there will always be others, water-starved and willing to die for the chance to claim what she’s defending. 

She looks over at Toast, glaring fiercely at the oncoming vehicles, and at Capable, who still isn’t speaking to her but is sighting down her rifle without hesitation. She thinks of Cheedo determinedly flipping through her medical texts, and of Dag’s calm, steady hands as she works them into the reclaimed earth. 

Every single person is going to die. Not today, if Furiosa has anything to say about it, but some day, maybe even soon. It’s the inevitable consequence of being born. Her body is singing with the anticipation of the fight, but inside, she’s dark iron, as still and distant as the moon. It’s a strange sensation, and she wonders if it’s the fever. Ace will take over if she falls, but she’s already deeply indebted to his loyalty, and she’d rather not lean on him further. 

The armada comes to a halt at the lift platform, and sits amid a cloud of settling dust. Furiosa hands her binoculars off to Ace, and puts her rifle up to her eye to squint into the sight. The dust is thick and swirling around the vehicles, but she’d know Capto’s ride anywhere, its pyramidal chassis constructed of three old hatchbacks welded together. It wasn’t a particularly aerodynamic design, but it was exceptionally sturdy, and the wide grills and long spikes on the front served him well in his favorite tactic of ramming motorcycles and smaller vehicles. She doesn’t see Atrox’s vehicle - a larger, overpowered beast of a thing - but that doesn’t mean he’s not riding with someone else. 

“Boss, counting eleven War Boys,” says Ace. “Two boys from Gastown, three from Bullet Farm.”

Furiosa swings the rifle around, confirming. “There’s more, I’m sure.”

“I’d bet on it.”

“See Atrox?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s the other Imperator?” Amy asks. 

“The Prime Imperator. Joe’s right hand,” Furiosa says. “The other is Capto. If they’re dead, more’s the better.” She does _not_ sneak a glance at Capable. Furiosa knows exactly what it takes to become an Imperator, and there’s no room for the redemption of her fellows. 

Capto drops to the ground and walks up to the lift platform. He’s looking around like he doesn’t understand why the lift isn’t coming down, why there isn’t a triumphant celebration of the War Party’s return. He’ll be waiting a long time - the treadmill walkers are safely ensconced with the other workers, deep in the Citadel and away from the entrances. Furiosa has no intention of letting anyone up, not until they’re proven reliable, and maybe not even then. 

One of the Bullet Farmers comes up and gestures to another vehicle, one that’s been haunting the Citadel’s base for the last six days. Sand has drifted up around its oversized tires. Furiosa can’t see well enough to read lips, but from the body language, the Bullet Farmer is trying to convince Capto of something, and at first he’s resistant. He stops, and looks up at the skull carved in the Citadel’s wall - at Furiosa and the girls - and then he walks quickly to the vehicle, sliding into the back and out of sight.

Nothing happens for a long stretch of minutes. Furiosa is choking against the need to cough, but she doesn’t dare take her scope off the car. 

“What’s he doing?” whispers Toast. 

“I can’t tell,” she says. At her current angle, she can just barely see his shoulder. It’s not a clear shot, or she’d have taken it. “Talking to someone, maybe.”

Everyone waits. Furiosa has to tap Amy’s arm, and the Vuvalini obediently takes over watching while she forcibly ejects the contents of her lungs. 

“You still sound like shit,” observes Toast. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

Furiosa isn’t. No one is, but that’s not the point of the fight, is it? She refocuses her sight, and says instead, “He’s coming out.”

Capto emerges from the car, and comes to stand in front of the lift platform, looking directly up at Furiosa and the girls in the skull. He cups his hands around his mouth and bellows, “I know you’re up there, Fury! Surrender and we’ll consider mercy!”

He knows nothing of mercy. If she didn’t know it before, if she hadn’t seen the blood dripping down his arms in the aftermath of a raid, she’d know it now, by the swagger in his step, the arrogant cant of his hips. She’ll be dead the moment she steps foot on the ground, and so will everyone else who’s aided her. 

“Mercy,” breathes Capable, breaking her silence to look over at Furiosa with concern. “Do you think we can talk? Do you think he’s willing to-”

But Furiosa’s already reloading, the second bullet spinning through the air scant moments after the first. They hit Capto first in between the eyes, and then in the place his heart should be, and he falls backward, sprawled on the windblown sand. Two perfect hits: even Katie couldn’t have found fault. 


	37. Chapter 37

The Gastown boys and Bullet Farmers embrace the returning armada with the joy of a victorious army. The ones on bikes gun their engines, raising clouds of dust in a screaming fury to greet their brethren. “War Party!” Max hears a Bullet Farmer yell. “It’s the War Party! They’ll deal with her. They will!” Others jump on the roofs of their vehicles, waving their arms and yelling. “War Party is back! War Party!”

Max glances up at the skull carved in the rock. He can’t see anything more than shadowed figures, but Furiosa is up there watching, she _has_ to be. She’ll protect the girls, unless she somehow can’t. It occurs to him then with sick clarity that he’s not even sure if she’s still alive; she’d been standing when he’d left, but the ghosts reacted to _something_ , and he’s grudgingly learned to trust that sometimes they know things when logic tells him they shouldn’t. 

(Logic tells him they’re not even there, that it’s just his damaged brain conjuring up familiar faces and putting his own thoughts in their mouths.

Then again, logic hadn’t saved him from a bolt to the head, or found the cache of guzzoline and water. Furiosa’s desperate wheezing fills his ears _where are you Max why can’t you help us-_ )

“Steady, boy,” the old Vuvalini cautions. “She’s a big girl, and this is her turf. She knows what to do.”

He clears his head with a hard shake. He’s hidden himself in a snug little crevice, and so far, he hasn’t been seen. He’s got his pistols and a rifle, and between using some of the rifle bullets to damage tires and then liberating woefully unattended ammo, he has enough that he feels...well, if not comfortable, then at least somewhat prepared. He’s got several knives strapped to various parts of his body, and even if he hasn’t pissed in far too long, he’s still better-hydrated than most of the boys on the ground. 

All those advantages will disappear the moment he fires. He’s still too close to the ground to defend his niche, and even if he were in an ideal sniper’s nest, he’s nowhere near the shot that Furiosa is. He’d waste half his bullets, and he doesn’t have so many that he can take that risk. 

He forces himself to stop and breathe through his nose. The panic is rising in a cold, steady tide, bringing with it the chorus of accusing voices : _you let us die Max how could you let us die you were supposed to help us where are you_ \- 

What are his priorities? First, survival. The lizard part of his brain has declared this to be paramount, and he’s agreed with that assessment. His other goals are more nebulous. He’d meant to warn Furiosa and the girls that the armada was coming, but the Citadel was already under siege. Now, the armada has arrived, and he’s one person. He can’t break the siege, and if Furiosa’s up there - and of course she is, she has to be, that’s a stupid fucking doubt - she and the old ladies will be sniping everyone who tries to climb up. He’s sure she’s not looking for him - and why would she be, the voices sneer, when you made it clear at every juncture you were walking away? 

I came back, he wants to retort, but he’s talking to himself again, and it’s not helping.

So he waits as the War Party approaches, overheated vehicles chugging dolefully to a stop, the air brakes churning up a cloud of dust. The man who gets out must be an Imperator - he’s dressed like Furiosa had been, with the skull and chains at his waist and a forehead black with grease. He’s bow-legged and stiff, and he makes a few swaggering steps as he looks up into the lift bay, where the treadmills are silent and empty. 

“The fuck?” Max hear him say. The Imperator looks back at his monstrosity of a ride - a huge, vaguely triangular vehicle like a cancerous growth, too many parts and no thought for aesthetics - and says loudly, “There’s fucking nobody up there.”

From his perch, Max sees another man move in the cab. “What do you mean, there’s nobody up there? Get ‘em to lower the lift!”

The Imperator spreads his hands. “I _mean_ , the treads is fucking empty. Not a single slim prick up there.”

One of the Bullet Farmers is edging up to Imperator now, his whole body cringing. “Imperator Capto?”

The Imperator turns. “What? Who are you? What’s going on here?”

The Bullet Farmer holds up a hand. “‘M Called Jot. You’re the missing War Party?”

“Pass got fucking blown,” Capto snarls. “Fifteen fucking days we been driving. Where’s the treadmillers?” 

“She’s taken everyone inside,” the Bullet Farmer says. “We’ve been here six days, not a one’s got in or out.”

“ _She?_ ” Capto looks like he’s been slapped. “Which she?”

The Bullet Farmer blinks. “Furiosa, Imperator. She’s taken over.”

“Furiosa? That bitch is dead. The Rig fucking blew the pass and half the War Party with it.”

A shrug. “All I know is we got two War Boys come to the Farm eleven days ago, and they said she’d killed anyone who wouldn’t follow.” He gestures to an old station wagon front that’s been welded to the back half of a delivery van. It’s one of the first vehicles Max had sabotaged, and it hasn’t moved since. “Look, Captain Radem will fill you in.”

Capto snorts. “Fuk-ushima. He can come out and talk to me himself.”

The Bullet Farmer whines a little, and then leans in to whisper something that Max doesn’t catch. Whatever it is, it changes Capto’s mind immediately, and he strides over to get in the back seat of the modified station wagon. 

He’s gone a long time. The other armada Boys are clearly nervous, the shadowy driver of the pyramidal tumor-car urging patience with a wave of his hand.

When Capto comes out, he’s looking up at the skull and glaring at its shadowy watchers. “I know you’re up there, Fury!” he shouts. “Surrender and we’ll consider mercy!”

There’s a pause as his words echo off the stone, and then two expertly-placed bullets drop him right to the ground before Max even hears the shots. 

“Two bullets,” murmurs the old Vuvalini. “Well. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.”

He feels a smile quirk at his lips. Furiosa is _definitely_ up there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, uh, meant to start the action-y bits like three chapters ago, but I keep writing _not action_ , so... We'll see how much how much more waffling I can do before I have no choice but to dive into the fray. WE KEEP MOVING. 
> 
> Also I think it's been like a week since I've told you people how much I love you, and I seriously love you like whoa. You keep saying such lovely amazing things, and I just cannot even. So I'll just express my gratitude by throwing more chapters at you. That works, right? Right.


	38. Chapter 38

They hold off the War Party for almost fifteen hours. It’s a herculean thing, really, and in the end, just as it’s getting too dark to see, the ammunition is gone. The sky is purple and swollen like a new bruise, the clouds heavy with rain that doesn’t fall. 

The fight is hard, and Furiosa is so far past exhausted that every movement is agony. Her muscles are incandescent, her exhaust system flaring with sparks that come from her engines burning themselves to pieces. She misses three shots in a row, and it’s not until Amy grabs her arm that she realizes it’s because she’s run out of bullets. The Vuvalini upends the empty box. Even confronted with the evidence, Furiosa still can’t stop her human hand from making the motions, from slipping a nonexistence bullet into the magazine and sliding back the bolt. 

“Stop,” Amy says, her face pale beneath the smudges of soot and dust. “Furiosa. Stop.”

“Keep ‘em off the walls,” Furiosa mutters. She’s shaking, badly, and she knows that when she has bullets, she’s been hitting her marks, but _how_ , when it’s suddenly colder than a desert night? She can’t move her fingers. “Got to. Off...”

Amy’s looking at Toast, who’s already nodding in agreement. “We can’t stay here,” Toast says. “I’m out, you’re out.” She pats the pistol at her hip. “I’ve got forty rounds for this boy, but he’s no good at this distance.” 

“They’ll get in,” says Amy, sneaking a peek over the balcony. 

Toast is already reaching down, slinging Furiosa’s mechanical arm over her shoulder and hauling her to her feet. “Yeah, but they’ll have to blast the doors, and that’ll give us time to fortify.” She gives Furiosa a gentle bump. “Fuck, you’re way too warm. Stay with us, Fury, okay?”

“Keep ‘em off...”

“Yeah, that’s not working so well. We’re going to try something different.” Furiosa can hear Toast’s frown. “How long does this shit last? I thought she was getting better.”

The Vuvalini shrugs, and shoulders the now-useless rifles. “In the old days, you’d take a round of pills and it would be gone in a week. Now? Who can say.”

Toast hefts Furiosa up and they stagger back from the balcony, back past the pumps and toward the door. 

 

****

 

As night falls, the Citadel gradually goes quiet. There aren’t any lights visible in the stone, and to the casual observers, the towers look abandoned and empty. Max suppresses a shiver. He’s listened to the gunshots become fewer and fewer, and now what passes for windows are shut tightly. He’s spent the day napping, mostly - Furiosa and her girls seem to have taken care of the War Boys trying to climb the walls, and he doesn’t want to get spotted by either side, so inaction is the only choice left. He runs out of water mid afternoon; he thinks the others have been out since the night before. 

Now, it’s dark, the mercurial wind blowing sand around with impunity. He pulls his goggles over his eyes and his scarf over his mouth and nose. In the blue twilight, shadows are starting to creep up the sides of the rock, and no one shoots them down. 

“Now’s your moment,” the Vuvalini says. There’s iron in her tone, and she’s perched on the rock beside him like an outlandish bird, her white puff of hair flaring out above her scarf. 

Max isn’t much of a climber. He’s never needed to be. He can do it, sure, but heights aren’t his favorite, and some part of his body still remembers the terrifying vertigo of dangling from the War Rig, Furiosa’s iron fingers latched hard around his brace. If she hadn’t been holding him, she’d have been able to fend off the knife, she’d have never been stabbed, she wouldn’t have made that sound _why is she making that sound_ -

“Hey!” The Vuvalini snaps her fingers in his face. “Focus, boy!” 

He doesn’t know why he’s here. Furiosa can handle her own. She’s always handled her own. She’d handled the War Rig, and if he hadn’t stumbled into the middle of her escape plan, she’d have made it away free and clear. She knows what she wants, and she’s strong enough and ruthless enough that success is assured regardless of the cost. The only reason he’d turned around was because he’d thought maybe she could use a warning, but he’d failed at that too. 

_Why can’t you help us?_

_You’re supposed to help us!_

He should get down from his crevice and go back to his motorcycle. He should head back out into the waste and let Furiosa handle her own. He’s too out-numbered to provide any kind of effective boost to her defense here on the ground, and by the time he gets to the top, he’ll be out-numbered there as well, and since she’s certainly not expecting him, he’s likely to get shot on sight. He should go. The urge to run is cramping in his limbs, crawling under his skin like biting ants-

“Don’t be an idiot, boy,” says the Vuvalini sharply. “You can’t heal a broken leg by walking around on it.”

His leg aches from crouching in his niche for so long, but it’s definitely not - but then he understands, or at least thinks he does. If he ever wants to stop running, if he ever wants even a sliver of peace, he’s got to stay. 

The thought of staying triggers a buzzing white cloud of panic. He can’t stay. Staying isn’t something he does. Staying leads to people relying on him which leads to people dying, and the worst thing that Furiosa ever said about him was that he was reliable. It was like a death sentence, a single clear tone that set his teeth to tingling and turned his bones to mush. 

The Vuvalini is glaring at him, and he wonders faintly what would happen if he just walks away. Will she shoot him? Can he actually be hurt by one of his ghosts? 

He’s afraid of the answer. 

There’s a dead Gastown boy a few feet away from Max’s niche, and he drops down into the sand to rifle through the corpse’s pockets. He gets a few bullets - not many - and then strips off the boy’s climbing harness. Once he’s ready, he takes a deep breath, and just - walks. 

For one lightheaded moment, he’s sure he’s going to get shot, especially with the Vuvalini trotting along in his wake, but she doesn’t really exist, and it’s dark enough and the few combatants still on the ground are disheveled enough that no one even gives him a second glance. They’re all focused on the boys climbing the walls, and when he goes to one of the ropes, the Bullet Farm spotter just gives him a tired nod. “Give ‘em hell,” the Farmer mutters, and Max manages a single, jerky nod. 

The Vuvalini chuckles. “Oh sonny, you have no idea.” 

As he starts to climb, Max wonders if he’s finally, truly gone completely insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I tried to write the main fight, but it was all "they shot and we shot and they shot and we shot" and it was dumb so I deleted it and skipped ahead and it's much more interesting now. So we're doing it this way. 
> 
> 2\. The posting is slowing down a bit (sorry - I know you've noticed) because we FINALLY got our home equity loan and now we can tackle the nasty plumbing issues in our creaky old house. So now instead of spending all my spare time writing, I will now be doing much-needed renovation, with writing crammed in there somewhere because gah I can't stop. I promise I'm not giving up on this story, because I'm really really enjoying writing, and more than that I won't leave you lovely people hanging, because your comments mean so much to me and I'm THRILLED that you're enjoying this as much as I am. So - fair warning: I'll try to keep posting as frequently as I can, but if there's a gap of a few days, don't be concerned - I'm still heavily invested in this story and fully intend on seeing it through.


	39. Chapter 39

Joe had added the heaviest fortifications to the main pillar, to protect the lifeblood of the Citadel: the pumps and the hydroponics. Ace’s crew has already blown the catwalks and walkways between the towers, leaving only the underground tunnels still connected; the tunnels are much harder to defend, decades of shortcuts and winding passageways creating a dense maze carved into the stone. 

There isn’t room in the Citadel to protect its three hundred inhabitants if the defenses are breached, but Capable is doing the best she can. She’s still fuming at Furiosa for shooting the other Imperator, for ruining any chance of a negotiation, and she definitely hasn’t forgiven her for slinging the dead War Boy’s body out of the skull’s mouth. It was a barbaric gesture, and one that certainly hadn’t given pause to the Gastown boys and Bullet Farmers currently trying to break in. 

With the ammunition supply dwindling, she’d happily ceded her rifle to Amy and gone to help the milk mothers calm the civilians. Plenty has been an invaluable pillar of strength, and the mother named Almond, recently uplifted from the Wretched, immediately proved her worth as well, taking charge with a steady, resolute clarity. 

Everyone is clustered in the hydroponics, tightly packed in beneath the misty green trays. There are a few in the Vault, but Ace is concerned that the Bullet Farm may have been saving munitions capable of penetrating the dome, so Capable has instructed the others to stay as far away from the glass as possible. There are hoses and buckets ready to sate thirst and put out fires, drainage grates acting as makeshift latrines. The kitchen workers are doing the best they can without their giant ovens, and the little electric stove in the Vault is working overtime. Some of the mothers are singing to scared Pups, little white-painted bodies huddled against pillows of soft flesh. For many, it’s the first time these milkers have held children since their own were taken, and for the Pups, the first time they’ve been held since their older brothers left two weeks ago. 

The first explosion happens as a dull thump that reverberates through the rock, a few hours before midnight. “Breach,” says Ace tersely. “One of the lower doors.”

Toast glances toward the heavy blast doors at either end of the hydroponics hall. “Was anyone down there?”

He shakes his head. “Shouldn’t be. We pulled everyone back here.”

It hasn’t been a bloodless fight. They lost three of the Pups trying to earn their grease, and one of the War Boys fell to a Gastown bolt through his skull. Cheedo and Mari have enlisted several of the milk mothers and a small army of older Pups to help bandage wounds and ease the dying. Someone brought Dag a one-burner electric stove, and she’s been brewing herbs for tea and poultices almost non-stop. As Capable watches, Dag puts a fist in her back to ease a cramp, her pale hair hanging around her sweaty face in limp strands. 

Amy comes and stands next to Toast, leaning on her now-useless rifle. She looks exhausted; they all are, but there’s too much to do to take precious moments to sleep. “Well, girls, we have twenty pistols and twenty-five magazines. We’re out of rifle bullets.”

“I’m down to nineteen lances,” says Ace. “No grenades.”

Toast chews her lip. “I suppose flamers are out of the question?”

The old War Boy snorts. “Oh, we’ve got the equipment, for sure. We just don’t have any guzz to fill it, or the Boys to wear it.” There are only five War Boys left who are fit enough for combat, and Ace has stationed them at the doors. They’re sleeping in shifts, one Boy dozing on the hard ground while the other watches warily. One of the Boys still awake has a sleeping Pup curled over his shoulder. 

The relationship between the Pups and the older Boys burns in Capable’s heart. Angharad had been adamant that the War Boys were just as trapped as the Wives, in a prison made of ideas instead of glass, but it wasn’t until Nux that Capable had started to understand. Now, watching the rough affection with which the Boys treat the children, she is more resolved than ever to destroy Joe’s legacy. These Boys aren’t things, and they aren’t weapons - they’re people, they’re mentors and older brothers, and they deserve better than the fiery death intended for them. 

Another thump, this time larger, knocking small stones from the walls and ceilings. A couple of the smallest Pups start wailing, and are immediately taken up by milk mothers and Repair Boys. 

Toast looks at Ace. He shakes his head. “Same door. Still three levels down.”

She rolls her eyes. “How can you _tell_ these things?”

“Crew a War Rig for eight thousand days, then see what _you_ know,” he retorts. 

“Alright, alright.” She twirls her pistol. “Where do you need me?”

“Sleeping,” says Ace. “Might not get another chance. Best do it now, all of you.” 

There’s no argument. Amy goes to confer with Mari. Toast finds a pile of sleeping Pups and inserts herself in the middle of it, the boys snuggling close to share her body heat in the damp room. 

Capable winds her way through the crowd, around people huddled under blankets and sprawled in makeshift nests. The Vault is quieter, a small group of milk mothers and hydroponics workers washing rags in the central pool; the cloth is no doubt destined for bandages once it dries. 

Furiosa is curled in the sleeping alcove, her back to the wall and a pistol clenched in her human hand. She’s shivering despite the quilt, but opens her eyes when Capable slides back the curtain. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” says Capable. “It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”

“Are they in?”

“Not yet.” In the dim light of the electric bulb, Furiosa looks wrecked, deep circles under her eyes and her bruises not yet faded, but she’s still burning with an intensity that has nothing to do with fever. 

Capable is suddenly reminded of how Furiosa had climbed across the War Rig and into the Gigahorse with a punctured lung. They hadn’t known at that moment how badly she’d been injured, and it hadn’t been until they were all safe and away that Furiosa had let herself collapse. Even then, even when she’d been corpse-pale and struggling for breath, she’d told Max to get them all home, intent on protecting them beyond her body’s ability to function.

This is the same. This is Furiosa, fighting on all fronts, using every advantage and weapon she can. Capable hates that she’d desecrated the War Boy’s body, hates that she shot first, but this is still Furiosa protecting them. She doesn’t talk if there’s a faster way to eliminate a threat, and, Capable realizes, Furiosa’s world is very black and white: everything is a threat, until the moment it’s proven otherwise. 

She slides into the bed next to Furiosa, feeling the damp heat of her body even through the quilt. “I’m sorry,” says Capable. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

Furiosa doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t resist when Capable pulls her close. “Just because everything hurts doesn’t mean it has to,” Capable says quietly. 

“I can’t take that risk,” Furiosa rasps. “If anything happened, and I could have - I can’t.” 

Suddenly, Angharad is in the room, a heavy invisible presence, and Capable knows Furiosa is sandwiched between them, between grief for the dead and fear for the living. Angharad’s death is a ragged, gaping wound in Capable’s chest, and oh, she misses her, but she doesn’t feel the fear like Furiosa does. 

She runs a hand over Furiosa’s head. The stubble’s grown out a bit over the last two weeks, soft and ash-blond, hinting at a possible future as loose curls. “We’ve made this choice,” Capable says. “This is our choice as much as it is yours. We’re not afraid.” 

Furiosa’s shudders change almost imperceptibly, and Capable is certain it’s miserable, silent tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhh we're getting there, I promise I promise. I have like three Very Important Chapters written, but I just have to connect the dots between here and there.


	40. Chapter 40

The Citadel is immensely tall, rising above the desert with sheer, steep sides that seem to go on forever. When Max was little, a distant relative had given him a peculiar toy - a flat box filled with blunt needles that took on the shape of whatever was pressed into them. The Citadel reminds him of this, as if the desert itself were a giant pinscreen, and a giant has thrust three fingers up through the surface. 

The night is heavy and dark, the moon a faint sliver above the thick blanket of clouds. In the absence of sight, all his other senses grow fever-sharp. The rock under his hands is rough and still warm from the day, and the hiss of blowing sand and the whistle of wind is loud in his ears. The explosion startles him, but when he gets to the top of the rope, the Bullet Farmers have already gotten the door open, and been swallowed by the blackness inside. 

He cuts the rope. Down below, there are panicked screeches as the Gastown boys behind him fall. Max has no illusions that the survivors will give up; he can only hope he’s delayed them.

The smell of the tunnels hits him with the force of a speeding rig, equal parts wet stone, diesel exhaust, and the sweet reek of sewage. Suddenly the tattoos on his back are burning, the nape of his neck sizzling in his ears, and he can’t breathe, he’s drowning and the walls are too close and he can’t see-

“Easy, boy,” whispers the Vuvalini, and Max forces himself to exhale slowly through his nose. He takes out one of his knives and lets the worn handle ground him. He is not here as a prisoner. He is not here as a slave. His blood is his own, his body is his own, and he is here to help Furiosa purge this mountain fortress of its tyrants. 

(Is he here to help? She doesn’t need his help. She doesn’t need him. He’s just going to blunder into her grand plan like he did with the War Rig, and get her killed in the process _why is she making that sound why can’t you help us-_ )

No. There’s an invading army, and he’s here to take them out. He doesn’t know where Furiosa is, or how she might be fortified. His (admittedly weak) plan is to find her and somehow avoid being killed in the process, and if he takes out some of her enemies in the process, well. 

At the very least, he can offer her his blood, if she needs it. 

 

****

 

Furiosa wakes to a pounding head and lungs full of sludge. Her whole body aches, and she feels like she could close her eyes and sleep for a thousand days, if only her body would decide between breathing and not-breathing. She coughs and spits and checks her pistol, and tries to arrange her limbs so she doesn’t look like she’s staggering quite as much as she is. 

The dome is bathed in pale gray, the rising sun obscured by the dense clouds. There’s heavy condensation on the glass, drops like rain trickling down the panes. 

She thinks of the Green Place, of hot breathless afternoons followed by a sudden deluge, of rivulets tracing patterns in the rich dirt and the petrichor-tinged relief that comes after the storm. “You’re like a monsoon,” Valkyrie had said once, brown eyes warm and affectionate. They’d been lying together under an oilcloth stretched between their mothers’ motorcycles, taking refuge from the noisy inter-clan gathering near the water’s edge. “Around people you don’t know, you’re so quiet and stern, but then with us, you’re a bright, joyful flood.”

“A flood,” Furiosa had said dubiously. 

“Yeah,” Val said, grinning. “You never _ever_ seem to shut up.”

Furiosa had snorted and tried to pushed her sister out into the rain, Val grabbing at her hands until they’d gone tumbling headlong into the mud-

She doesn’t know why she’s remembering this. Val is gone. The Green Place is gone. 

She needs to keep moving. 

Ace is snoring in a pile of Pups when she leaves the Vault. It’s strange to see him so relaxed and vulnerable, and for a moment, she has to just watch the slow rise and fall of his breathing, the easy way he’s supporting the little one on his chest even when he’s asleep. 

“I’d leave him be,” says Toast, coming up behind her. “It’s been a rough night.”

“Where are we?” asks Furiosa, and maybe it’s the wrong word choice given her mental status over the last few days, because Toast looks alarmed. “I mean, what’s the situation?”

“Oh. Yes.” The former Wife spins a pistol on one finger. “We have almost no ammunition or trained fighters, and the War Party is steadily punching their way through the blast doors. We’re sitting ducks.” 

Very soon, the War Party will crashing through the last set of doors, and every single person, down to the last milk mother and Pup, is going to have to fight for their lives. They outnumber the War Party at least ten to one, but most of them are children and untrained civilians. Pitted against seasoned warriors made desperate by thirst and rage, they won’t stand a chance. 

“There’s going to be a battle,” says Furiosa. 

“These people are cooks and gardeners,” Toast points out. “What are we going to do, throw cabbages?”

Furiosa scrubs at her good eye with her human hand. She doesn’t have an accurate number of how many are in the War Party; she’d estimated that with the Bullet Farmers and Gastown boys already on the ground, there’d been nearly fifty people, but sometime between shooting Capto and waking up today, she’s lost count. If Atrox is still out there - and she’s sure he is, even if she hasn’t seen him yet - he wouldn’t have risked his crew trying to climb the walls when her people were still sniping. The Bullet Farmers - perhaps. She’d shot several. 

Atrox didn’t get to be Prime by being stupid. He isn’t brash like Capto; he’s cunning, utterly cold and ruthless. He has no compunction against using his crew as battle fodder - they’re awaited in Valhalla, after all - but reliable War Boys are hard to come by, and if he can convince others to die in their stead, that’s what he’ll do. If he knows Immortan Joe is dead - and by now, he certainly does - his only goal will be to cleanse the Citadel. She doesn’t know if he’ll install himself as the new Immortan, but he isn’t the sort of man to give up that kind of power if it’s offered. It’s how she knows he’s still alive. He’ll let everyone else do the dying, and be the last one standing amid the bodies.

What is he going to do?

“The other towers,” Furiosa says. “Have we seen them? Do we know if they’ve been taken?”

Toast shakes her head. “Too dark. We sent a couple of scouts up top, but they couldn’t see. We’ll send more when it’s lighter, but Ace didn’t want to risk any of the kids.”

She nods. “I’ll go.”

“You won’t. You’re barely upright.”

“I’ll be fine.” 

“Fuck, Fury.” Toast sighs. “You’re a bag of nails, you know that? Capable and Cheedo are going to kill me.”

Furiosa just smiles, and makes sure she’s got an extra magazine for her pistol. “I’ll be back soon.”

The air in the Vault is filtered, yet another precaution Joe took in his quest for a healthy male heir. The hydroponics bays are sealed against the War Party and full of unwashed bodies. It’s not until she reaches the top terrace, out of breath and wheezing like a punctured tire, that she understands why the morning had seemed so hazy and gray through the windows of the dome. There’s cloud cover, yes, but more immediately, thick smoke is billowing from the other towers. 

Furiosa suddenly knows what Atrox is doing. The towers are burning, the terraced crops on the mesa table glowing red in the early morning light. 

He knows as well as she does that the hydroponics aren’t enough to sustain a population, that the grain and beans grown outdoors are the dietary staples.

He’s burning their food. He’s going to starve them out.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goldberry, this is your towel warning.

Furiosa is frozen for several long breaths, watching the flames engulf the terraced gardens, a thin line of orange licking up the stalks of millet, chia and amaranth. She can’t believe - except she absolutely can. 

The fastest way back down to the others would be to belay down the side of the pillar, but she doesn’t dare risk it, not when the Bullet Farm’s snipers are lurking below.

She takes the stairs, holding her ribs and gritting her teeth against the sharp jolt of pain that comes with every step. It’s easier going down, but it still feels like forever before she’s almost to back to the Vault.

An out-of-breath Pup meets her on the stairs, eyes wide. “Imperator! Imperator! They’ve breached!” 

She doesn’t have to ask who. She just lifts the pistol in her human hand and clicks off the safety. 

The hydroponics room is chaos. The vegetables are too damp to burn, but that’s not stopping three Gastown Flamers from trying, long tongues of flaming guzzoline splashing on the trays and dripping onto the floor. Frantic gardeners are trying to extinguish the fire, but their hoses are just spraying the flames around. Milkers are pushing panicking kitchen workers and Pups into the Vault, Repair Boys and War Boys howling for Valhalla and throwing themselves at the invaders. 

Furiosa shoves the Pup back into the stairwell, and dives for cover behind an overturned table. Toast is already there. “They just broke through,” she says, “and there’s too many people. I don’t have a shot.” She’s trying to be calm, trying to keep her hands from shaking, but there’s a furious hitch in her voice. 

Amy and Mari are using the Vault door as a shield, trying to make the most of their pistols, but the smoke from the wet plants is already thick and and making visibility even worse. 

“How many are there?” Furiosa asks. She can’t tell. 

Toast shakes her head. “They hit the door and threw in a couple of grenades. They just -”

“Stay back,” Furiosa instructs. “Get people up the stairs if you can.” 

The former Wife nods, and presses her spare clip into Furiosa’s machine hand. “Take it. You’ll do more good than I will.”

The smell of burning flesh is rising on the smoke, savory and far too familiar. Furiosa has no intention of doing _good_. “Go,” she says, and Toast darts away, grabbing at crying Pups as she goes. 

Amy and Mari are pinned down, Amy pressing hard against the sudden bloom of red on Mari’s thigh. Somewhere in the Vault, Capable and Dag are holding down a milk mother as she bucks, Cheedo desperately trying to smother the flames on the woman’s arms. Ace is nowhere to be seen. Furiosa’s eyes are burning, and she pulls her scarf up over her nose, wishing for her goggles. 

She could wish for a lot of things at this moment. She could wish for allies, more ammunition, more time. She could wish she’d never agreed to come back. She could wish she’d never been taken, that the Green Place wasn’t poisoned and dead. 

Wishing has never gotten Furiosa anywhere. Movement has, and movement is the only thing she has left. They are out-gunned and out-manned. They have no food. She’s running out of breath, every gasp stabbing through her chest, and there is no time.

In one smooth movement she rises, sighting down her pistol and lining up the shot. One of the Flamers goes down, his hand convulsing on the trigger, gouts of fire splashing on the hard stone floor. The others turn toward her, and she takes one out, one of her War Boys plunging a lance into the other. 

She shoots until she runs out, and lets the empty magazine drop at her feet. She ducks down to reload, and then shoots again until the gun jams, and it too falls to the floor. She takes her spare from her belt and loads it, taking out another four Bullet Farmers. When that jams, too, she grabs a lance from a War Boy’s body and and charges into the smoke. 

Joe might still control Atrox, but he will not control the Citadel. 

 

****

 

His world is fire and blood.

This is where she’s fortified, and her attackers have still gotten through. The air is thick with smoke and the screams of the innocent, and then Glory is wailing along with them, a cacophony of anguish in his bleeding ears. He has a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other, and there’s no way of knowing which War Boys are Furiosa’s, and which belong to the War Party. He stabs and feints and ducks and fires, rolling under a tray of smoldering plants. 

(Hydroponics? It makes sense.)  


Where is Furiosa?

Bullets sing through the air scant inches from his head, showering him with rock chips as they hit the wall. The quick whoosh of an exploding lance lights up the room, the shock wave reverberating through his bones. Max ducks and blinks and keeps going. 

He doesn’t see the Bullet Farmer until he’s got a vicelike grip around Max’s neck. 

Now would be a good time for the Vuvalini, he thinks distantly, as panic howls in his skull like a raging whirlwind. He shoves back, hard, and the Bullet Farmer connects with the wall, but it’s not enough to loosen his grip. Black sparks dance in front of his eyes, and Max grits his teeth and lashes out with the knife, but the Farmer’s other hand knocks it away. The pistol clicks empty, and he doesn’t have a good enough angle to bash. They whirl amid the smoke, grappling desperately. 

A shot rings out, and he feels the shock of it radiate through his shoulder. For a moment, he’s sure he’s dead. 

The pain never hits. He keeps breathing. The Bullet Farmer falls to the side, and Max scrambles away. Someone else shot his attacker, and when he looks up, heart pounding-

She stares at him with a burning intensity of a hawk, the pistol smoking in her hand. Her chin is slightly tucked toward her good arm, and at first he doesn’t understand until she blinks, and he sees the green of her right eye has gone dark, and is the barest degree out of true with the left. Her pupils are blown wide with adrenalin. 

“Are you here?” she rasps. “Are you real?”

It’s the same thing he’s about to ask. He’s never hallucinated someone living - and she has to be alive - but there’s no way to tell what will bubble up from the black morass of his brain. The sharp rattle of her breath is suddenly loud in his ears, his fingers itching with blood that’s clotting in the dry desert air _why is she making that noise_ -

“Fool,” says Furiosa hoarsely, her voice crashing over him like cool water. 

“Max,” he says. “That’s my name.” His heart is beating so fast he’s dizzy. 

Her lips twitch. “Fool,” she repeats, fond and sharp and urgent, and then her human arm is around his neck, fingers carded hard into his hair, her forehead pressed hard to his.

“Max,” he says, because she’s _there_ , she’s real and she’s there, and his brain is sputtering like an overboiled engine, his body twitching like an abandoned lizard tail. He makes himself return the embrace, his hand tentatively palming the back of her scalp. She’s way too warm and way too thin, covered with greening bruises and a crusty burn on the side of her head that could only be a bullet graze - but she’s alive, her gravity snatching him up and swallowing him whole. She smells like sweat and smoke and pungent herbs, and it’s a heady mix that punches him square in the chest. “My name is Max.”

“I know it is,” she says roughly, and knocks her forehead against his hard enough to hurt, grounding him with the pain. “That doesn’t mean you’re not a fool.”

His face feels strangely tight, and he realizes it’s because he’s grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've hit 50k words and we are still speeding ahead. Thank you so much for supporting me on this adventure!!
> 
> (apparently I write faster when I have less time. who knew)


	42. Chapter 42

He’s afraid to let go, afraid that once he stops touching her she’ll turn into one of his apparitions and none of this will be real. Her human hand is clenched hard in his hair, and her eyes are running from the smoke, slick trails through the grime on her cheeks. 

“You and I,” she says fiercely, “are going to have a long talk when this is all over.”

Max nods. At this moment, he’d agree to crawl on his knees to Bartertown, if that’s what she wanted. 

Something explodes nearby, and a Gastown boy staggers toward them. Furiosa turns her pistol on him and fires, just as Max unsheathes two of his larger knives and runs them through the boy’s neck. The boy slumps to the ground, doubly dead. 

A Bullet Farmer comes charging forward, and Furiosa ducks to reload, letting Max send one of his knives spinning into the Farmer’s skull. Together, they whirl as one, Furiosa firing at an oncoming War Boy while Max retrieves the knife, slicing hard into a Flamer’s leg and then dropping him with a sharp blow to the chest. 

It’s like being on the War Rig again, with enemies coming at them from all sides and Furiosa’s dizzying, unapologetic competence at his back. He knows how she moves because she moves like he does, and she’s a terrifyingly accurate shot. He hears the sharp click of her pistol as she runs out again, and without a word he’s passing her ammunition from his pockets. The air is thick with smoke, but joy and adrenalin are flooding his system, and as he decapitates a War Boy, Max thinks that if he died right now, this moment would be his Valhalla.

The violence abruptly stops, and they’re left standing in the smoke, breathing hard and covered in blood. He looks at Furiosa, his body singing with her proximity. There’s a faint twitch of a smile in her eyes above her scarf, but it’s immediately aborted by coughing. The plants in the hydroponics trays are damp, but guzzoline clings as it burns, and the smoldering fires are rendering the air almost impossibly thick. 

She points through the smoke, and even though he can’t see what she’s pointing at, he follows. Every cell in his body is screaming, and when her mechanical hand latches around his wrist to guide him through the haze, it’s as if a pressure valve has been released, and he can feel all his wildly spiralling energy dropping into focus as her touch. 

The red-haired Wife and one of the old Vuvalini from the Gigahorse are struggling the close a giant vault door, and Furiosa immediately pushes Max inside. “Is that everyone?” she rasps.

The Vuvalini nods, and Furiosa grabs the heavy latch and helps her pull. The Wife has frozen in place, and is staring at Max, wide-eyed and disbelieving. 

Half a second later, there’s an ear-piercing shriek and the breath is suddenly crushed from his lungs, and she’s dancing wildly as she hugs him. It’s not unlike being shaken to death by a dog. “You came back! You came _back!_ ”

Her name is an adjective. Competent. Complete? 

The vault door hisses shut, and Furiosa sinks back against the wall, doubled-over and coughing, her human hand pulling at the scarf on her face. The Vuvalini is there immediately, helping her loosen the fabric and leaning her forward so her head is between her knees. 

“Vents-” Furiosa chokes out. 

“We’ve got the fans turned as high as they’ll go, but the power keeps flickering,” the red-haired Wife says immediately, and Max staggers out of her enthusiastic embrace. “Keno thinks there might just be a short, but he needs to check on the windmills.”

A shadow crosses Furiosa’s face, and it’s as desperate and miserable as he’s ever seen her. Not even when they were face-to-face with the War Rig’s windshield between them had she carried such despair. “The windmills...the terraces…”

The red-haired Wife drops down in front of her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Her eyelids flicker with pain. “Burning. They’re burning.” 

The hard buzz of panic is back in Max’s skull, a white auditory blur like the empty airwaves. The gardens are in the terraces. The Flamers were torching the hydroponics, and of course they’d torched the crops. 

The Vuvalini at the door is pulling Furiosa to her feet. “One thing at a time. Let’s get you inside for now,” she says firmly.

“Cheedo,” says Furiosa. “Toast. The others.”

“We got as many inside as we could,” says the red-haired Wife, her eyes going wet. Max notices for the first time that her arms and torso are spattered with blood and streaked with ash. “We tried, but it was all so fast-”

Furiosa lurches forward and the girl is suddenly bawling, her face pressed hard into Furiosa’s shoulder, Furiosa’s human hand cupping the back of her head. 

“We _tried_ ,” the Wife wails, “we just _couldn’t_ , and it was so fast, and then the fire, and-”

“We keep moving,” Furiosa says quietly. “We have to keep moving.”

The Wife goes stiff at that, and then angrily pulls away. “You _always_ say that! What’s so wrong with wanting to stop for a moment? People are _dead_ , and we can’t just leave them behind!” Tears are streaming down her face, and she makes a halfhearted fist, too bound up in her emotions to properly lash out. “We shouldn’t have to leave them behind!”

“Capable-” the Vuvalini says.

Capable. That’s her name.

But she’s storming off, the blonde Wife rising to follow her from the sea of bodies laid out on the floor. 

Furiosa scrubs her human hand over her face. 

“You,” says the Vuvalini, and there’s a rifle he hadn’t noticed pointed toward his ribs. “Where did you come from?”

“East,” he says, his tongue tripping on the word. “Rode out hard. Ran into the War Party, tried to slow ‘em down, but.” His shrug is convulsive. “You’ve got trouble. Had to, hmm. Help.”

“You took off,” the Vuvalini says. “This time, will you stay?”

Furiosa’s not looking at him. She’s staring at the ceiling of the tunnel, eyes flooded and red.

He doesn’t want to stay. No, that’s not true. Wanting to leave is very different from not wanting to stay. “Staying is...hard,” he finally mumbles, “but you got my gun. Mm. ‘S all I can offer.”

The Vuvalini is unconvinced, but lowers the rifle. “Well. I suppose that’s something. In you get.”

The tunnel opens up into a large cavern, the far side of which is a huge glass dome, lined with plants and streaked with moisture. The air is still smoky, the dull tang of guzzoline mingling uncomfortably with burning flesh, but at least it’s breathable. The injured and dying are crowded together, white-painted children cuddled against voluptuous women wrapped in gauze. 

Fragments of memory from his time as a Blood Bag flicker through his mind, the smell of the dead and the cries of the sick, a spittle-faced creep muttering _got a War Boy running on empty_ and _hook up that full-life_ -

He shakes himself. He’s here. _Furiosa_ is here. He’s like an unsecured buzzsaw, wildly spinning between terror and joy. He has no control, no buffer. 

“Boss!” A War Boy - no, a Repair Boy? - sees Furiosa and comes running. There’s a smudged circle of black in the center of his forehead, and he’s dripping with exhausted sweat. “You’re here!”

“What’s going on?” 

He’s looking her over like he’s afraid she’s not real. “Are you all right?”

She flexes her machine hand. “New arm got me through. Capable said the windmills are bad?”

The Repair Boy shakes his head. “Can’t get up top from in here. We need the scrubbers to get the smoke out, and we’ve turned off all non-essential power. Still getting brownouts.” He sets his jaw. “We won’t fail you, Imperator, we’ll get it working somehow.”

“I’m not doubting you, Keno,” she says, and drops her voice so the others can’t hear. “Atrox is burning the terraces.”

Being so close to that much white chalk is making Max itch with the urge to defend himself, even though this one is obviously just a blackthumb whose only concern is getting the mechanicals up and running. 

“Do we have any masks up here?” Furiosa is asking. 

Keno shrugs. “I’ve got one in my kit, and I think Maz has two in his.”

“Get them,” she says. “We’ll need them to go through the smoke.”


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So while we were melting from the heat and waiting for the appliance delivery, I thought I’d do a quick chapter. Naturally this turned into a giant behemoth that’s taken me three days to get out the door. I like to keep things in 1500-word bites because that’s a post size that keeps me motivated and moving, but yikes, this refused to be broken up.

She’s trying not to look at him. The battle might be over, but the war is far from won; she has decisions to make and a burning rock to fortify, and he’s standing right there, shoulders hunched and eyes darting nervously like a caged animal. He’s here of his own free will - at least, she hopes he is - but willpower is only so effective against the roar of feral instinct and gut-deep fear. She’s seen how deep his fear runs. There are ghosts in his eyes that never really go away. 

Max. Her prodigal fool is standing here in the Vault. He came to help, he came-

She can’t think about that. She is an engine on the very precipice of burnout, and the notion that she isn’t alone, that she might actually have _help_ , threatens to shatter everything. Every breath is a hard knife in her side, she’s gritting her teeth against feverish tremors, and there’s a pounding claustrophobia from the smoke congealed in her throat. Her head feels like it’s splitting in two, a band of melting iron burning through her scalp. 

“Get the masks,” she says to Keno, and he immediately nods. 

Amy is looking at her with granite-faced concern. “What’s the risk in letting the fire burn itself out?”

“The windmills power the pumps,” Furiosa says. “No power, no water.” She doesn’t need to say that without the water, they have no leverage. They might be able to siphon up enough to sustain themselves, but the Citadel will be functionally dead, a sun-rotted corpse ripe for plunder. 

“Gastown and Bullet Farm came for water,” Toast says, coming up as she winds a roll of bandages in her hands. “They’ve gone dry. Atrox is hurting them as much as he’s hurting us.” She seems to notice Max for the first time, and quirks an eyebrow at him. “Huh. Wondered when you’d turn back up, Wild Man.”

He grunts, fingers twitching at the ends of his ragged sleeves. 

“He might not realize the others are out of water,” Amy says. 

“He doesn’t care,” Furiosa says bluntly. “He will reduce the Citadel to dust before he lets us control the water.”

Toast frowns. “He’s fucking himself in the process.”

She doesn’t know if Atrox believes in Valhalla as literally as his crew does. What she does know is that he’s like one of the wide-jawed dogs she’d seen once in Bartertown, the ones whose bite never loosens until you shoot them in the head. It’s how he became Prime, how he came to be Joe’s trusted resource for annihilating his enemies. She’d been made Imperator because she got the job done and her crew home safely and efficiently. Atrox made Imperator because those who opposed him ended up as fertilizer. 

Keno comes back with the gas masks, Maz and Ferrous breathless at his heels. He eyes Max suspiciously. “Boss....?”

“He’s with us,” Furiosa says. 

“That’s Max,” Toast offers. “He saved Furiosa’s life.”

The Repair Boy’s eyes go wide, and he takes an involuntary step backward. “The...he stabbed you. Right?”

Toast nods. “Exactly.”

The information is too much for him to process, and Keno looks like he might cry. “Made you breathe…”

Max’s eyes flutter and he huffs in embarrassment. 

Furiosa is already pulling the mask down over her face. “Enough.” The others nod easily, but Max looks confused until she pushes the mask into his hands, rolling her eyes. “That includes you, Fool.”

Just before the leave the vault, he fishes around in his many pockets and offers up a double handful of rifle bullets. “Bless you, boy,” Amy says. “Watch our girl’s back, eh?”

He nods convulsively. 

“Need me with you?” Toast asks. She’s hanging back a bit, rolling the ball of torn fabric around in her hands. 

“Stay with the others,” Furiosa says. “Help them.” Cheedo is kneeling in the middle of the crowded room, putting some kind of paste on a treadmiller’s forehead burn. There’s a thick bandage wrapped around Mari’s leg, two Pups anxiously attendant as she cleans a bullet wound in a milk mother’s shoulder. Those who can move are trying to help those who can’t, but there just aren’t enough people. She doesn’t see Ace or any of the War Boys. 

Her eyes burn, and it’s not because of the smoke. If she’s just single-handedly wiped out an entire generation of War Boys…

“Boss?” Keno’s looking at her. They’re all looking at her. They all still think she’s going to save them. They haven’t realized yet she’s just an agent of their death as certainly as Joe had been. They’re still just battle fodder; only the commander has changed. 

She jerks her head toward the Vault door. “Let’s go. Eyes on the tunnels.”

 

****

 

The gas masks are old - everything good is old, since it all came from Before - so their seals aren’t perfect, and the tunnels to the surface are so choked with smoke all five of them are coughing, and Furiosa shouldn’t be grateful, but it makes her own labored breathing much less conspicuous. She knows Ferrous has always had weak lungs, and he’s wheezing even harder than she is. He endures it with a resigned acceptance, relinquishing his tool bag to Maz when the other Boy offers to carry it. 

There are a handful of Bullet Farmer bodies crumpled in the stairwell, and halfway up, they find a War Boy there, too, one of Ace’s boys at the end of his half-life. Silver paint is dried on his lips. “Claw,” Maz moans quietly, his voice made hollow by the mask, and the Repair Boys tent their fingers in homage to V8. 

“He died historic,” Ferrous says fiercely. “He made it to Valhalla.”

“Valhalla is a fuk-ushima lie,” snaps Keno. 

“He could’ve died a corpse in Organic’s shop,” Ferrous retorts. “At least here he got to do something chrome!”

“Shut up, both of you.” Maz gives Ferrous a hard shove. “He’s still dead, right.”

“Enough,” says Furiosa, and the Repair Boys fall in line. 

The terraces are burning. She doesn’t know how long it’s been - she was just up here, only moments ago - but the yellow canola crowns are already engulfed. Over the roar of the flames, she hears the short pop of gunfire, and looks up just in time to see another of Ace’s War Boys hit the ground, a Gastown bullet in his chest. Throat burning, she pulls the mask off her face, letting it hang around her neck.

“They’re burning - they’re burning our _food_ ,” Keno hisses, as if he’s just realized what’s going on, and Furiosa has to grab him to keep him from taking off toward the Flamers. 

“Get to the windmills. The _windmills_ ,” she says to Keno sharply, and all three Boys look at her with murder in their eyes. “Food grows again, but we need water first.” She turns to Max. “Follow them. Keep them safe.”

He jerks his chin at her, hesitant to obey. 

She shakes her head. “ _Go._ ” They need the pumps more than they need her. Without her, the others will carry on. Without the pumps, they have nothing. He seems to understand, and silently hands her a spare magazine and a knife from somewhere in his jacket. The metal is still warm from his body, and she lets her human fingers curl around it. 

Max and the Repair Boys take off toward the wind farm at the edge of the uppermost terrace, and Furiosa reloads her pistol and heads down to the injured War Boy. There are still two Flamers left, waving great blazing swathes from their wands like fiery pennants, but they’re out of range and there are four Bullet Farmers between her and them. She drops the Gastown shooter, but the War Boy is already dead, hard arterial spurts turning the ground beneath him to mud. 

His name was Trick. He’d been on her crew for less than twenty days before she’d gone off-road.

Bullets whiz past her head. She has no cover - she’s on higher ground, completely exposed, and the canola is barely waist-high - so she runs. It hurts, _Mothers_ , it hurts, but everything hurts and the only thing to do is keep moving. She has to keep moving. 

There’s an irrigation pump house nearby, and she makes a running dive behind it, hitting the ground hard and rolling into cover. Her vision hazes to black with the pain, and her skull is buzzing from a lack of proper air. Gritting her teeth, she heaves herself upright, peppered with rock chips from stray bullets. When she thinks they’re reloading, she peers over the top of the pump house. The Bullet Farmers have shotguns. She has a pistol. There are four of them and two of their brethren, and because she’s been trying to breathe and stay conscious, she’s not really counting her shots - _if you’re alive, you should be counting,_ Katie would sneer - but Furiosa knows for sure she doesn’t have six left. 

She lines up the shot and a Flamer’s head explodes, his body convulsing as he falls to the dirt. More bullets sing by, her pauldron sparking as one gets too close. She drops back down, feeling the weight of the gun against her human palm. Four shots left. There’s no way she has more than four. 

The remaining Flamer is moving steadily; the canola is close to harvest, and the oil-heavy seeds catch fire with a whoosh. 

The Bullet Farmers have noticed Max and the Repair Boys heading toward the windmills, and two of them break off to climb the stone stairs carved between the terraces. They’re too far away for her to risk a shot with this particular pistol. The other two skirt the edge of the burning field, heading toward her. 

She can feel the heat of the fire pressing against her back, and craning her neck around the edge of the pump house, she looks for another refuge. There isn’t any - the fields are all burning, and in scant moments, she’s going to be on fire, too. 

The irrigation is all done by a root-level drip system to conserve water, and the pipe is metal, because anything else would get eaten by the relentless desert sun. In desperation, she kicks hard at the pipe coming from the squat stone house, and after three forceful hit one of the joints comes apart, but the water coming out is sluggish and not worth a damn against the oncoming flames. 

The dirt around her explodes from Farmer bullets, and Furiosa curls up behind the pump house, her breath thick in her throat. Four bullets. Five enemies. Not even Katie could down two men in a single shot on a pistol like this. She has to choose between water and food. 

She’s suddenly in the War Rig, the Buzzards hard on her sides and the Wives tucked into the cargo bay. She’d had to choose between her crew and the Green Place, and now that she’s twenty days from that moment, she’s not sure at all she made the right choice. It was like choosing between her right hand and her left, an impossible decision she alone had to bear. 

Whatever the cost, she has to keep moving. 

Her first shot hits the closest Bullet Farmer in the head, and he drops. His buddy turns and opens up his magazine, and there’s a sharp slice of screaming heat on her right bicep, another on her left cheek. She grits her teeth and fires again, and he drops, too. 

The pain hits, and she has to sink back against the stacked stone of the pump house wall, breathing hard and choking against the viscous pull of black at the edges of her vision. With her metal hand she touches her injured arm, the burnished steel coming away dripping red. 

They’re not serious injuries, just grazes that will probably even heal without scars, but her engines are running so low on guzzoline and coolant that her body is reacting as if she’s been gutshot, the discordant, nauseous buzz of shock bursting through her veins like water in a fuel line. She’d scream if she had the breath, every ounce of muscle and tissue electrified and icy-white. 

She thinks longingly of the tiny can of chrome she’d once carried at her belt, and is distantly horrified at the urge. 

The wind’s picked up, spreading the flames even faster through the terraces. She’s surrounded by waist-high canola, seed pods dry and ready to ignite. The two remaining Bullet Farmers are heading toward Max and the Repair Boys, and her pistol is too light by half. 

She heaves herself to her feet, and, clutching her ribs with her prosthetic, staggers through the canola. Every step is a hard knife through her side, made worse by the dense, oily smoke. She could scavenge the shotguns from the dead Bullet Farmers - but the fire’s jumped rows, engulfing their bodies, and just as she’s thinking it, the spare shells start to go off, loud reports that make the remaining Bullet Farmers jump and turn. 

Furiosa tucks herself down and grits her teeth and _runs_. She is a speeding rig, sparks and flames exploding from her stacks and her engines strained past breaking. She hits the first Farmer with her pauldron right in the solar plexus, knocking him to the ground with a breathless sound that might be a scream of pain or might be a howl of bloodlust. She hears bone crunch, and before he can regain his breath, grabs his windpipe with her metal hand and squeezes hard. She doesn’t need nerves to feel the wet grind of tearing cartilage. 

In the ruthless calculus of battle, she knows she’s at a disadvantage, and when she sees the other Bullet Farmer move out of the corner of her good eye, she just thinks, _maybe I’ll get lucky_ before he’s sweeping down on her. The Farmer on the ground is blowing scarlet bubbles through the hole in his windpipe and slowly dying, and as his buddy’s arms close around her shoulders, she scrabbles for his shotgun. She doesn’t have time to cock it, so she jerks her head back, slamming it into the second Bullet Farmer’s face, a brief frisson of triumph at the crack of his nose against her skull. His arms fall away, and she’s rolling. 

Furiosa has one shot left in her pistol, and she takes it. The second Bullet Farmer’s face explodes in a bloody cloud, but the shot’s hardly left the chamber when she’s cocking the shotgun. 

Someone grabs her arm - a third Bullet Farmer? _Where had he come from_? - and then Max is there, his eyes wild. “Hey...hey,” he’s saying, “got to go. Mm, got to go _now_.”

Blind fury flares through her, hot as burning guzzoline and twice as volatile. She’d told him to stay with the Repair Boys, so what the _fuck_ is he doing right here? She’s about to clock him with the shotgun when the canola around them abruptly ignites. 

For one ice-cold, terrified moment, she’s sure that Joe was full of shit, but Joe was _right_ , that the end is fire and blood and this is what it means to die historic. It seems appropriate, somehow, that she will arrive in Valhalla on the cindered remains of the Green Place. She is the last of the Vuvalini, destroyer of the Citadel, ascending on the turbulent thermals of a fiery storm.

The next thing Furiosa knows, she’s drowning. She sputters and gasps, and Keno has an irrigation pipe pointed at them, hosing them both down as their clothes steam. Heedless of his own charred leathers, Max is checking her over with a feverish intensity. 

“Boss?” quavers Ferrous. 

She can’t help it. As soon as she gets her breath back, she throws a punch that knocks Max square in the jaw. He falls as if poleaxed, looking slightly stunned by the turn of events. 

“What the fuck!” yelps Maz. “Boss! He’s on our side!”

“I. Told you. To stay with them,” she grinds out. 

Max is already on his feet, his stance wide and ready to defend, but it’s Keno who jumps between them, his hands up. “I told him. _I_ told him!” the Repair Boy snaps. “We’re fine. We’re fine! We’re up here, and you’re down there in the fires, and you’d got guys all over you!”

“You stay put for a reason,” Furiosa shoots back. “Your job is to keep the pumps. Your job is _not_ to worry about me.”

“One of your crew pulls a stunt like that, going off on their own, what would you say?” the Repair Boy demands. “You’d give ‘em hell, that’s what.”

“My crew is _dead_ ” Furiosa shouts, and the words hang in the air like a physical object, heavy and ugly. Keno stares at her, fire in his eyes, the other Repair Boys right behind him but not backing down. Max is still prepared for another hit, but he looks more concerned for her than for himself.

“Maybe they are,” says Keno finally, “but we ain’t, and sure, we’ve never ridden with you, but we’re here, right. Joe’s dead, other Imperators dead or kami-krazy, and who else do we got? No one. So you’ll pardon me for wanting you alive, Imperator. I’m not sorry one bit.”

Max blinks and looks mildly approving, as if he’s just noticed that Keno is, in fact, a reasonable person. 

“Windmills are bust, anyway,” Keno says darkly. “They’ve scrambled the drive trains. It’ll be three days before we can get ‘em working again.”

“We can do it, though,” Ferrous interjects. “I mean, if we’re not getting shot at.”

The weariness she’d been fighting off suddenly looms like the gray sky overhead. She doesn’t deserve their loyalty, not when she’s fucked everything up so badly. She can’t regret taking the Wives, because Angharad had been so eloquent and persuasive, but Angharad’s not here to make sense of all this, and from where Furiosa is standing, there’s a clear, straight line between the moment she’d turned her wheel and this moment now, where she’s standing atop the Citadel as all their food burns around them, the windmills that power the pumps shattered and destroyed. She hasn’t seen Ace since the battle began, nor any other War Boy still alive. 

We are not things, Angharad had proclaimed, and that’s the ultimate truth. Things endure. Things survive. Vehicles are passed down from driver to driver, are repaired and crashed and repaired again. Tanks can be patched, bolts retooled. Humans cannot. Humans are fragile, blood and bone and hope, and when they die, there’s no fixing, no repairing. They go to dust, and in the end, nothing is left. 

Furiosa had thought once she’d wanted to be a person. Angharad and her easy confidence had made it seem enticing. Now, Angharad is gone - gone as a person, fragile and ephemeral - and Furiosa is desperate to be a thing, wants to shut herself down and just be a object to be used and repaired and used again. 

“Boss?” says Keno hesitantly. 

She’s not going to cry. She’s not. Everywhere hurts, a loud, pulsing cacophony of pain that she can’t ignore and can’t endure, and Max is staring at her like he’s expecting her to throw him a lifeline, and she just _can’t_. Furiosa can’t save anyone, she can’t even save herself; how can he expect her to save him, too?

She sees the black start to collect at the edges of her vision, and holds off as long as she can. She’s locked inside herself, bolted down like a wayward panel, but it’s not enough. She’s on the ground before she registers the jarring impact.

Furiosa stares up unseeing into the heavy sky, and just before she loses consciousness, she feels the first heavy drops of rain on her face.


	44. Chapter 44

When Max and the Repair Boys come back, they’re black with smoke, soaking wet, and carrying themselves like men who have suffered a heavy defeat. Max has Furiosa slung over his shoulders, mingled blood and water dripping from her limp fingers, and Capable’s heart leaps into her throat.

“Alive, yet,” the feral man mutters. “Mm...not for lack of trying.” 

Cheedo and Dag are already moving. “There’s room upstairs,” murmurs Cheedo, and Dag immediately nods and goes off to scavenge bandages. 

Capable can’t stay. There’s a hurricane of rage and grief swirling in her chest, and watching Max tenderly wiping the ash from Furiosa’s unconscious face brings back memories she’d rather not relive. 

“The windmills?” she asks Keno, in a quiet aside. 

He shakes his head. “Drive trains have been cut, at least on the ones we could get to. Fields are burning. Couldn’t get to all of them, but probably the same.”

Her eyes prick with frustrated tears, and she has to hug herself to keep from screaming. “Can we fix it?”

The Repair Boy nods, and his eyes flick up the stairs, to where the others have taken Furiosa. “It’s an easy enough fix, provided we can get up there.” A tiny smile quirks at the corner of his mouth. “Started to rain. That’s pretty chrome.”

They both look back to the dome, and for the first time, the heavy patter of furious rainfall registers in Capable’s ears. “Rain,” she says, because it’s almost an impossible thing, out here in the waste. “It’s raining.”

“It’ll put out the fires, maybe,” says Keno. He takes a shuddering breath. “I mean, it’s _got_ to, or we got nothing to eat-”

“We’ll make it,” Capable interjects. “We’ll figure it out.”

He’s fiddling with his soot-smeared gas mask. “You’re - you’re okay, right? I mean, you’re not hurt, right?”

“I’m all right.” Suddenly, he reminds her painfully of Nux, all eager enthusiasm and wide-eyed vulnerability. Keno is older, quieter, and at this moment he’s more than a little beaten, but even defeated he’s trying to be strong, trying to be a leader and trying to make sure everyone around him is still alive. “Are you?” she makes herself ask. “Okay, I mean.” 

He nods, a little surprised, as if he didn’t expect her to ask. “Yeah. I just. Well. I should, um, check on the vents.” 

By the time she finds words, he’s already gone. Sighing, Capable goes to help Plenty cut sheets into bandages. 

 

****

 

Later in the afternoon, there’s a commotion at the Vault door, and then Ace staggers in, leaning heavily on two War Boys who are in equally rough shape. “Tell the boss they’re leaving. They’re all heading out,” he grunts, and collapses. It’s only Spade’s quick reflexes that keep him from landing in the pool. 

Capable calls an impromptu council meeting, meeting with hastily-chosen representatives of the various worker factions under the giant glass dome. It’s still raining, fat drops streaming down the glass. The air is heavy and humid, Pups and workers crowding the windows to see the desert as it drowns. 

They can’t mount any real defense. There are three War Boys who’d defected - two who’d dropped their weapons as soon as they’d seen Furiosa alive, and a third who’d fought like a demon until he found his little brother, and since then the Boy and the Pup had clung to each other and refused to be separated. None of them are from an Imperator’s crew; they’re all too young, too inexperienced. 

In the end, someone has to go look, to confirm what Ace had said, and Capable, Keno, Plenty and one of the War Boys leave the Vault. The fire in the hydroponics has mostly burned itself out, the plants still smoldering in their trays. The air is thick with smoke, but once they open the doors, the natural ventilation of the tunnels starts to draw the smoke away. Regardless of what goes on its halls, the Citadel is a living creature, and it knows how to heal itself. 

They approach the former milk mothers’ room with caution, but their wariness is unfounded. The room hasn’t been touched, the plunder interrupted, and when they look out, the only vehicles left are a handful that hadn’t made it to blacktop before the rains hit, and are mired near the start of Fury Road. “They’re gone,” whispers Plenty. “They’re truly gone.” 

“We don’t know that for sure,” the War Boy, Miro, warns. “They could still be somewhere in the Citadel.”

Capable is too overwhelmed by the damage. The rain is a heavy gray curtain between the Citadel’s towers, but she can still see the black smudge of smoke curling from the terraces, the torched vehicles and burning plants. “How are we ever going to fix this?” she breathes. 

It’s Plenty who answers. “Same way we always have, with luck, guts, and a lot of ingenuity.” She nods firmly. “We’ll redeem this place, just you watch.”

 

****

 

There are too many people, all crowded together too closely, and Max’s head is pounding. He endures as long as he can, but in the end, he makes some vague, almost whining noises to the Vuvalini guarding the Vault door, and she lets him leave with a sympathetic, “Watch your back, boy.” 

He doesn’t know where he intends to go, so he goes where the smoke is thinnest and just - walks. 

His jaw aches. Furiosa has a hell of a right hook - not surprising, that - and the way she’d looked at him at that moment burns in his mind. She’d been spitting blood and wheezing hard, so full of rage and shock she’d barely recognized him. He doesn’t even think hitting him was something she consciously chose to do; it was a blind reaction, an uncontrolled outburst. A volcano can’t help erupting, and Furiosa couldn’t help punching him, and the desperation he’d seen in her eyes is still an uncomfortable chill deep in his bowels. 

Furiosa is an unbalanced wheel spinning madly on its axle. He hadn’t seen it at first, had only registered the deafening roar of relief at seeing her face, but he can’t unsee what had happened in the canola field. Her teeth had been bared and her pistol empty, and if he’d been two seconds slower, there would have been nothing left to save. Judging by her reaction, she’d been prepared. 

His hands are shaking, and he fists them hard against his thighs, forcing deep, calming breaths out through his nose. 

He needs to leave, the ache to not-stay a wild, furious shuddering in every cell of his body. His heart is pounding, his brain conjuring up all the ways everyone here will die. He knows they will; everyone does. His only option is to run, run as fast and as far as he can, and maybe, if he’s very, very lucky, he’ll be far enough away and he’ll survive. Glory’s voice echoes through his skull, high and sharp - _why don’t you help us_ \- and he knows it’s wrong, knows that his best chance is with other people, but all the reason in the world crumbles before his desperately seesawing limbic system. 

He can’t stay, but he can’t leave, not after seeing Furiosa that way. If this were only a matter of fluid transfer, he’d let himself bleed out into her veins if it meant helping her, but he knows it isn’t that simple. She’s damaged in the same way he is, and that terrifies him, because he needs her to be strong, needs her to stand as a shining example of what he could have been if he weren’t so painfully addicted to solitude. He needs her to be the road warrior he’d first met twenty one days ago, resolute and furious and _you may have to drive the rig_. 

He thinks of his knife sliding between her ribs, that awful slide of metal on bone, and then the brief moment of shock as she came up gasping. Had he punctured something vital, something more delicate than the bubble of air trapped between her lung and her skin. Had he somehow upset the balance of who she was, and now she’s flailing wildly like a depressurizing canister, leaking an essence more rare and essential than blood or oxygen?

He waits for his ghosts to either contradict or reaffirm, but for once they’re silent, the only sound the steady drip of water in the darkened hallway. If he leaves right now, his tracks will be lost in the pouring rain, and he can be well away before the inevitable crash. 

It’s no use. He already knows he’s going to stay, and he feels more trapped than he ever did in the Organic Mechanic’s cage. Before he can stop himself, his fist is slamming hard against the wall, all his ghosts echoing his scream of pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys keep me on my toes and keep me motivated and asdlkfjlak you're all so good to me I love you like whoa. Your support is even more incredible since I've been checking y'all out (creeper yeah) and HOLY CRAP are you all ridiculously good writers. Seriously, this fandom is incredibly talented. LOVE IT!!
> 
> I mentioned a while ago that I tend to write scenes out of order and then stitch them together as they fit, and we're coming up on a lot of those. It'll be SO NICE to get ahead of all my miscellaneous bits.


	45. Chapter 45

“Capable…” Cheedo’s tugging on her sleeve like a child, eyes shining with wild joy, “...it’s _raining!_ ”

All she can think of is Max and Keno and the others, drenched to the skin and bent beneath the weight of defeat, of the plumes of smoke mingling with the clouds. 

“Capable!” Cheedo puts her hands on Capable’s cheeks, gently turning her face up into her own. “It’s raining,” she repeats quietly. “It’s a miracle, can’t you see?” 

They take the stairs. Water drips down the steps, cool and dark against the stone. Those who can walk have gone up to the terraces, milk mothers and Pups and kitchen workers and gardeners. They’re all standing in the wet ashes of the former canola fields, grinning and crying and laughing and holding each other, the younger ones - and some of the not-so-younger ones - running and spinning in circles and celebrating the water that falls from the sky. 

“It’s like a gift,” breathes Cheedo, one arm around Capable and the other slung around Dag’s waist.

Dag grins. “It’s like the world is trying to wash Joe right out of the dirt.” She spits. “Good riddance.”

Toast comes up and rests her chin on Cheedo’s shoulder. “When was the last time it rained? I can’t even remember.” 

Several of the younger Pups are huddled under cover, looking tentatively terrified, and one of the very youngest is clinging to a milk mother and sobbing. “Ai, hush hush,” the mother is soothing, trying very hard not to chuckle. “Just like taking a bath now, innit?”

Even in the Citadel, water is such a luxury, one of the natural abundances Joe controlled with an iron fist and kept all for himself, and the largesse of the storm is an impossibility. Some people are running around with buckets and leather sheets, trying to collect it; even though there’s millions of days of water in the aquifer beneath their feet, wasteland habits never truly die. 

They’re all so...happy. They’re ecstatic. They’re celebrating the rain and the gift of water and being alive after being in danger for so long. 

Something unknots in Capable’s chest, and when one of the Pups flings himself into a particularly deep puddle, the laughter just comes bubbling out.

Beside her, the other former Wives start to laugh too, until all four of them are giggling like girls as the rain runs down their faces like happy tears. 

 

****

 

She’s barely upright, but the Vault is almost empty. “It’s _raining_ ,” she hears a kitchen worker murmur to a gardener who’s too injured to move. “Like from the sky and everything. Hasn’t rained like this since I was a kid meself…”

Furiosa doesn’t like to dwell on her time in the Vault, but she’d read a story about a girl who’d lived on another planet amid endless rain, who’d missed the single hour of sun due to the cruelty of her companions. She’s seen a few rainstorms in her lifetime, but she remembers her first one at the Citadel, maybe a hundred days into her seven thousand. It had been a brief little meteorological aberration, barely deserving of the word “shower”, but she’d been so starved for the Green Place she’d just pressed her face against the window and wept for hours-

Before she can think it through, she’s over where Ello and Riz are curled protectively around Ace. None of the War Boys are in great shape, but the younger two lurch to their feet at her approach. 

“Raining outside,” she says mildly. 

Their eyes dart from her to the window and back again. Ello licks his lips. “We heard.” They’re old enough that they’ve seen a rain or two, but nothing can stop a dry human heart from longing.

“So what are you waiting for?” When they don’t move, she rolls her eyes. “ _Go._ ”

They’re limping, but they’re suddenly Pups again, rushing out of the room. Ace chuckles a little and winces. 

Furiosa raises an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

“I don’t know what you’re looking at me for, boss,” he says. “I ain’t moving.”

“When your Imperator gives you an order, you do it,” she points out. 

He stares at her. “...seriously?”

“How many more rains you got in you, old man?” Furiosa retorts. “Get your ass up.”

“You’re a mad bitch,” Ace grumbles, but lets her pull him upright. 

They make an ungainly creature as they stagger up the stairs together, Furiosa with functional legs but severely limited lungs, and Ace with functional lungs but restricted locomotion. “We’re a right mess,” he observes dryly as they hit a landing, and Furiosa starts coughing so hard she pukes. 

They’re both leaning against the wall, drenched in sweat and shaking. Her ribs are pulsing white-hot agony with each heartbeat, a thundering pain so severe she has to think very hard about not throwing up again. She’s sure it shows in her face, because he nudges her shoulder. “And here I thought nobody could possibly make me look good.” 

She can’t talk, so instead she offers him a particularly offensive hand gesture. 

Somehow, they make it up to the terraces, and collapse in a heap near the door. There’s enough of an overhang that they’re protected somewhat from the rain, but the air is still thick and cool. There is a tentative Pup hanging back from the others, and Ace pulls him into his lap. The boy immediately snuggles against his chest, contentedly sucking a thumb. 

“You want out in it?” Furiosa asks.

Ace stretches his injured leg with a grimace. “Nope. ‘S good enough for me.”

They sit in silence for awhile, two stiff old warriors and one sleepy child watching the water sluice between rows of burned canola, rivulets carving channels in the dusty soil. The sky rumbles a little, as if adjusting itself, and the rain continues to fall. Furiosa closes her eyes and inhales, testing the edges of the tight band of pain around her chest. The air smells like damp earth, like the Green Place during the monsoons, like Valkyrie’s hair in the afternoon. She can almost imagine that the smoke is from the cooking fires, blue tendrils hanging low over the waxed-canvas tents and mingling with the tangy-sour exhaust of the motorcycles. It almost smells like home. 

“You okay, Boss?” Ace says quietly. 

Her throat is too thick to speak, so she just shakes her head. 

“You done good,” he says, and when she looks over at him through blurring eyes, his lopsided old face is soft. “We’re gonna make it. I wasn’t sure what you were aiming for, but...” he gestures to the Pups running through the fields, to the younger milkers splashing in a puddle and shrieking with delight. “...you’re giving this place back to them. I didn’t see it before, but I see it now.” He shakes his head. “You and me, we’re the old guard. Your girls and these Pups, they’ll change it up good. Heh, maybe even make this place like it was Before.” He chuckles. “Can you imagine, Boss? This being a happy place?”

The Pup in his arms shifts in his sleep, and Ace palms the boy’s bare head. “You done good,” he repeats. “It’s a hard road, no question, but you keep driving, right, and I’ll keep being Ace.” He looks over at her, quirks an eyebrow. “Deal?”

The fields are burnt, the windmills broken, so many people dead or injured, and Furiosa herself _hurts_. Ace owes her no loyalty, not after everything she’s done, but he’s still here, giving it freely. She can feel her face contorting, overflowing with hot, burning tears. She scrubs her human hand against her eyes, but it doesn’t make any difference. 

“Oi,” he says roughly, “none of that,” and reaches over with his free arm, pulling her head down on his shoulder. His skin smells like sweat and the blank powdery dryness of his paint. His hand is a heavy, comforting weight on her scalp.

All over the Citadel, the rain continues to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story Furiosa thinks of is [“All Summer in a Day”](http://www.btboces.org/Downloads/6_All%20Summer%20in%20a%20Day%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf) by Ray Bradbury


	46. Chapter 46

He comes back some hours later, well after nightfall, when the lack of light in the tunnels makes it impossible to see, and the dark-induced claustrophobia is worse than the anxiety of being surrounded by other humans. He’s breathing a little easier now, and dragging behind him a Bullet Farmer’s trenchcoat he’s filled with scavenged weapons and ammunition. The old Vuvalini’s no longer on guard duty, but the weary War Boy at the Vault door doesn’t seem at all surprised to see him, although his bruised eyes widen at Max’s haul. “Fuk-ushima, that’s fantastic, that is. Cheers, mate.”

The Vault is less crowded than it was before, and as he arrives, others are streaming out, helping less-ambulatory companions. He guesses it’s because it’s safer now, and everyone is largely returning to their own sleeping nests as they can, to familiar places and routines. 

Furiosa is awake and moving, and even though he tries, he can’t stop staring at her. He’s distantly aware he’s following her around like a puppy, but next to her is where the buzzing is quietest, and it doesn’t seem wrong. 

She’s in rough shape, swaying when she stands and keeping an arm tucked against her ribs. There’s a deep cough that he finds frankly alarming, but the others aren’t paying it more than a cursory glance, which tells him it’s an old problem and maybe one that’s being resolved. 

The youngest Wife - the dark-haired one, who he sort of remembers as being smaller and more fragile-looking - catches him staring, and leans to his ear. “Lung fever,” Cheedo says quietly. “Mari thinks she’s over the worst of it, but she still needs rest.”

Max huffs a little, an involuntary sound that tells her exactly how he thinks Furiosa will take to resting, especially now that’s she’s deep in conversation with one of her War Boys while simultaneously oiling her rifle. Cheedo rolls her eyes and nods. “Maybe it’ll be better, now that you’re here,” she says. 

That’s a responsibility he doesn’t want, something that’s too weighty for his frame, but he can feel the heft of it settling in before he can protest. Cheedo’s hand is on his shoulder, triggering a swell of panic, but he forces a breath out through his nose. “You look like you could use some rest, too,” she says, and he can suddenly feel every single one of the last twenty days - maybe even the last hundred days - prickling under his skin like burrs. 

His instinct is to say no, to say he has to go - but he has no vehicle, the bike’s somewhere down below, and Cheedo’s pressing two bowls of food into his hands and saying, “It’s all right. You’re welcome here. Take this to her, will you?”

So...he does. The smell is intoxicatingly delicious, and at some point in the last eighteen days, Cheedo’s acquired a tone that is gentle yet impossible to disobey. 

Up close, the War Boy is surprisingly old, gnarled like some ancient desert plant. A thick bandage is wrapped around the crown of his head and another covers his left shoulder. “They’re on the run,” he’s telling Furiosa, who nods. 

“They’ll have time to regroup, but we don’t have the strength to go after them right now,” she says, and ducks her head in a fit of coughing so severe Max feels a moment of lightheaded panic. “Later,” she manages, and the War Boy nods, seemingly unfazed, and takes his leave, leaning heavily on a makeshift crutch. As he goes, Max gets the distinct impression the War Boy is sizing him up. 

Furiosa takes a long swig of water from her canteen, and accepts the proffered bowl with a nod. “That’s Ace,” she says as Max sits down beside her. “My second.”

There’s nothing to say to that, so he just puts a spoon in his mouth. It’s some kind of stew, and flavor hits him immediately, a dense, savory warmth that starts at the root of his tongue and going straight to his belly. 

They eat in silence for awhile, and when he catches her eye, Max realizes they’re both stealing glances at each other and trying to pretend they’re not. “I’m glad you came back,” Furiosa says quietly. 

Max wants to say that he shouldn’t have left, but that’s not true - he’d needed to go, needed to let the dry air of the desert scour the stench of the blood bag cages from his limbs. He wants to say that he’d _wanted_ to stay, but that’s not true either, and since she’s never lied to him, he doesn’t intend to lie to her either. He wants to say that he intended to come back but - he didn’t.  


She’d fallen asleep on his shoulder in the Gigahorse, and for hours he’d been afraid to even breathe, the weight of her head pinning him in place. She’s just - too much. Too bright, too strong, too...everything. When he’s around her, it feels like his skin is blistering off, and the sudden need for her approval is maddening. 

She’s still looking at him with a tired, bemused little smile, and it’s obvious he’s been quiet too long. “Me, too,” he manages. “Glad...” and he’s going to say _to see you_ but it sort of gets stuck and refuses to come out, so he huffs and nods and looks away. 

She seems to get it anyway. 

His spoon hits the bottom, and when he looks down, he realizes he’s scraped the bowl clean. 

“Take mine.” She reaches over and swaps with him. Hers is almost untouched. Max blinks. 

She shrugs. “Not hungry.”

“Sure?” He clears his throat. “Because, um.”

But she’s already shaking her head. “No. Go ahead.”

He should protest more, because there are hollows in her cheeks that he’s sure weren’t there before, but he’s still _starving_ , and the stew is _delicious_ , so - he eats. 

Furiosa is quiet, and once she’s done polishing her rifle, she leans forward to rest her head in her hands, coughing more than not. It’s nowhere close to cold in the dome, but she’s still shivering, so he takes off his jacket and drops it over her shoulders. During their escape, she’d looked tired - they all had, three days spent constantly moving - but now, she looks...exhausted. Thin, like she’s a wire drawn past its tolerance point, and stretched to breaking. He thinks again of his knife in her side, and shudders. 

One of the Vuvalini is walking by with an armload of bandages, and as she passes she says sternly to Furiosa, “Don’t you dare fall asleep there.” She spears Max with a glare as well, as if he’s somehow willingly complicit. He feels for a moment like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a particularly dangerous goanna. 

“I’m fine, Amy.” Furiosa waves her off and scrubs her human hand across one eye. She looks at Max. “It’s safe here, for now. We’ve got sentries. You’re welcome here.”

It’s the same thing Cheedo had said. It’s an echo of what she’d said before, in the sands: _you’re more than welcome to join us_. It had shredded him, then, those words, because he’d known at that moment he was going to leave and yet part of him had thrilled to the notion she’d wanted him to stay. 

Furiosa stands, and Max is immediately there as she sways in place. After a moment’s hesitation, he reaches out to steady her, and almost jerks his hand away. She’s like a furnace beneath the leather. 

She stumbles up the stairs, and because he has nothing else to do - because he’s kind of afraid she’s going to drop like a stone - he follows her. “Sorry,” she says between coughs. “They keep feeding me this herbal shit, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”

He shakes his head convulsively. He’s seen enough of the Vuvalini to know that if those old ladies say something is good, it’s probably good. “Might just need some time, is all.” 

She stops for a moment, and even though she won’t let him see her face, there is such tight desperation in her shoulders that he wishes he hadn’t said anything at all. Stupid, stupid...she’s in rough shape and she hates it, and if it were a cage she’d been bloodying herself against the bars, but the cage is her body, so she can’t. 

There’s a nest of blankets in a corner, and she eases herself down with a grimace. She tries to hand him back the jacket, but her teeth are practically chattering, and he shakes his head. She coughs and swallows hard, and burrows into the leather. 

He sits, stretching his bad leg out and pushing his thumb into the hard knot of tissue near his knee. 

Furiosa is watching him with red-rimmed eyes. “Why are you here?” 

For a moment he thinks she means _why are you sitting next to me_ and he doesn’t have a good answer for that. There are too many unknown people around, and she’s familiar. He’s worried. She’s unsteady. She has his jacket, and although he mostly trusts her, he’s still feeling a little anxious about letting one of his few possessions out of his sight. 

She’s still looking at him, and then he notices the furious set to her jaw. _Oh_. Why is he _here_ , at the Citadel. Why did he come back. 

“Staying is hard,” he tries, because it worked on the Vuvalini at the door. 

“Yeah,” she says evenly. “It is.” And that’s suddenly the line drawn between them. 

Max is broken, and Furiosa - she’s just too much. Even in the dark silence of the War Rig, she’d been too bright and too loud and after years of wandering the wasteland, she’s like a gulp of sweet, clear water that sends his brain into a cold-induced paralysis. Even then, he could feel the tendrils of addiction settling in, easing through the cracks like roots seeking nourishment, like a banksia pod split open after the blaze. He already needs her, needs to be around her, just….to watch. To observe. He’s clinging tightly to the ledge, fingers bloody as he desperately tries to maintain his autonomy, but if he lets himself, he could fall and fall and fall and never hit the ground. It’s why he ran. It’s why he wants to run right now, when she’s looking at him, half accusing and half sad, because she sees him struggling and she’s waiting for him to fail her. (To fail his better self.)

_You’re more than welcome to join us_. 

He’d stammered at that, and tried not to notice that she’d turned away to hide her disappointment. He knows he’s a valuable commodity, a strong fighter and universal blood donor. She’d have been stupid not to try and entice him into following. 

And damn it, he’d wanted to. He’d wanted so badly to follow her that he’d had to clench his hands to keep them from shaking. He wanted to follow her like he wanted water, a deep physical thirst that never stayed quenched. It’s why he went after her in the salt wastes, why he’d turned around when he saw the armada. Even before she needed his blood, he wanted to be useful. Wanted her to look at him like she did when she asked him his name, showed him the kill switch sequence. Wanted her to see him as someone she needed, as if they hadn’t been trying to kill each other not ten minutes before.

It burns to need someone this much, to want to be needed himself. He’s gotten so used to cutting himself off, to ensuring that he can walk away, and then Furiosa crashed into his life like a meteor, and he’s still stumbling around with the aftershocks, desperately trying to get his bearings.

He’d read somewhere that meteors sometimes have high concentrations of iron, and it makes so much sense. She’s thrown off his compass completely, to the point where the arrow points to wherever she is. North is no longer the cardinal. 

Max left, and Furiosa stayed, and isn’t that what it all boils down to? Those are their core values: she stays and fights even when she wants to leave, and he leaves and runs even when he wants to stay. His blood has never been more useful than when it’s flowing through her veins, and if she somehow required every last drop, he’d give it to her without regret. 

He can’t say any of this. Even if words didn’t tangle themselves up in his mouth, even if he didn’t stammer like a shuddering engine…if he were the greatest speaker from Before, the most gifted orator the world has ever known, even then he’s not sure he could make her understand. 

Instead, he reaches over and flicks a blanket over her legs. “Sleep, mm?”

“You’ll be here.” It’s not a question, but it should be. 

He nods, and makes himself drop a tentative hand on her ankle, the slim lines of her bones muted under the worn fabric. It’s hard to breathe, but he forces the words out anyway. “Yeah. I’ll be here.”


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to make three things abundantly clear:  
> 1\. This is not the end. We are _nowhere close_ to the end. Think of the rainstorm as equivalent to the War Rig finding the Vuvalini. All the players have been introduced and brought together, but we aren’t anywhere near resolution. (Or, for that matter, redemption.)  
>  2\. A couple of you mentioned that progressing on the intended Max/Furiosa path now that they’re in close geographic proximity would feel weird if not done slowly. Don’t worry. These two kids are in no condition for nookie right now, and even if they were, they’re both so shellshocked and damaged enough that any kind of emotional intimacy is going to be approached with all the enthusiasm of a live bomb. They’ll find some peace eventually, but it’s going to be a hell of a road. (Plus, you know, they still have to contend with reality of living in the postapocalyptic wasteland.)  
> 3\. I love you all so much. I’m not even kidding. Every single comment just makes me dance. I’m beyond delighted that you’re enjoying reading it. It’s like...validation-flavored cupcakes, or something.

It rains. 

It rains for three whole days. 

For the arid wastes, it’s a biblical event, and as the storm drags on, Toast starts to mutter about needing an ark. Dag immediately retorts that maybe the Citadel is instead a floating island, like in that book about the doctor who could talk to animals. The reality is much less fantastical: the underground portions of the Citadel are flooding, the routes between towers effectively cut off, and Keno and the rest of the Repair Boys are working without sleep to get the catwalks back in place. Most of the catwalks were designed to be retracted, but several have been damaged by the battle, and on the ones that are mostly intact, the rain is interfering with the hydraulics. At the very least, the rain provides momentary relief to the pumps, which have been limping along since the desecration of the windmills. Mercifully, the fallout levels have been acceptable. 

The Wretched straggle back to the Citadel, drenched and looking every inch their name. Capable pitches a fit, but until the catwalks are restored or the water levels recede, the treadmillers can’t actually get back to the treadmill, and it’s a painfully slow process hoisting people up one by one. 

Furiosa sleeps. She’s obviously trying not to - she tries to rally, tries so very hard - but as soon as she’s been on her feet even ten minutes, the fatigue seems to hit like a speeding rig, and regardless of what she’s doing, it’s like someone tripped a killswitch. The first time it happens, she’s thumbing through Joe’s ledgers with Capable; it’s not until one of Capable’s questions goes unanswered that she realizes Furiosa has fallen asleep sitting up, the ledger still clenched in her fingers. The second time, Furiosa is conferring with Keno and one of the remaining War Boys, Ello, and in the middle of a sentence, her chin drops down, and she’s out. Hours later, she’s still slumped in her chair, and Cheedo has to nudge her gently, and suggest maybe she’d be more comfortable in bed. 

She’s too exhausted to argue, or even be embarrassed about it.

Max isn’t sure what to do. He’s bone-tired himself, and while his ghosts are quiet, their absence in his head makes everything else seem overwhelming, the black cavern of his skull amplifying every sound until the echoes roar in his ears. He dozes, twitching alert every time Furiosa coughs in her sleep. 

“We have extra blankets,” Cheedo offers quietly. “We can set you up elsewhere, if she’s keeping you awake.” Somehow, the little room on the ground floor of the Vault has come to be Furiosa’s; there’s barely enough space for the two twin beds inside, a thin curtain providing the only privacy, but it’s secure and quiet, and by wordless agreement, it’s hers. 

Max shakes his head. He can’t bring himself to lie down on the other bed - the girls have been sleeping there in shifts - so he’s dragged a couple of chairs to wedge between the beds, one for his ass and for his bum leg. He sits with his leg stretched out and his arms hugging his chest, and once he’d woken up to find someone had draped a quilt over him. (At first, he’d thought he’d been tied in a sack, his arms pinned and bound, and he’d nearly toppled out of the chair trying to free himself. He’d managed to right himself only at the last possible moment, and still feels a stab of shame that his brain is so fucked up that a single thoughtful gesture - one of the girls covering him with a blanket - might have resulted in a self-induced concussion.)

Cheedo’s still staring at him, so he clears his throat and tries again. “It’s, mm. It’s okay. ‘M fine here, thanks.” He’s not fine, not really, but he’s coming to the realization that he’s not fine _anywhere_ , and if he’s going to be not-fine, he might as well be not-fine where he can hear Furiosa still breathing. (Even though every time she starts coughing - every single time - he has a flashback to the nightmare where she’s gasping beneath his knife, and he’s stabbing her and stabbing her and she just keeps dying, and then he jerks awake shaking and drenched in cold sweat and she’s still gasping-)

Even if he had the words, he doesn’t think Cheedo would understand. He fists his hands beneath his armpits, and hopes she doesn’t notice their tremble. 

He thinks she notices anyway. He can see it in the softness of her smile, the way all the girls are so gentle around him, as if any sudden movement will send him skittering into the shadows like a lizard.

(Are they so wrong? They’re not wrong.)

So...he keeps watch. He watches Furiosa sleep, her eyelids translucent like an infant’s above cheeks bruised with exhaustion. She’s half-curled on her side, her breath whistling in her throat, and even when she’s unconscious there are deep lines carved around her mouth. Logic dictates that she shouldn’t even be alive right now, but here she is, determinedly hanging on past all reason and sense. 

Furiosa stays even when she shouldn’t. 

It’s humbling and overwhelming, and he feels the panic welling up like the floods in the bowels of the Citadel, relentless and inescapable. Whether or not he stays has no bearing on what Furiosa does; she’s made that perfectly clear. She’ll let herself be bludgeoned to ribbons, and then she’ll spit in her opponent’s face, and she’ll do it not for a car, not for an engine, but for people she loves.

If she were anyone else, he’d inwardly sneer and make some jaded comment about people inevitably dying, but - this is Furiosa. She knows this. She’s had as much taken from her as he has - not that such grief can be compared, even he can admit that - but as much as this world has hardened her, she’s also made the choice to stay soft. To stay gentle. To stay open and vulnerable and raw. She’s let herself be hurt, over and over and over, and one of the people she’s hurt for is Max. It’s not fair. He never asked for that. He never gave any indication he wanted-

He wants to scream. He wants to run, to jump in his car - not his car, his car is _gone_ , it’s ashes and dust - and just _go_ until the roar of the wind and the engine overwhelms the roaring in his head, and the vibration of the road pounds his body into submission. It’s not fair for her to put this burden on him. He never asked to be brought into her circle. All he’d wanted was a clean getaway - first, in the Rig, and then, when he’d slipped into the crowd - but somehow Furiosa got under his skin like a burr, digging in and setting off some sort of reaction that’s leaving him shaking and shattered. 

He’d tried to leave, but he ended up back here, and he strongly suspects that if he tries to leave again, he won’t even get past Gastown before his ghosts gang up on him and destroy his intentions. He’s stuck here, just as certainly as if he were still in a blood bag’s cage.

_If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane._

They’re his words, but he’d been trying to warn Furiosa, not knowing that she was already insane, and that’s what it is, insanity: the urge to keep caring for people who are going to die, going to abandon you, going to betray you and hurt you and-

It’s pointless. There are things in this world that are immutable, realities that cannot be subverted-

“It can’t - can’t be fixed!” he bursts out, startling Capable, who yelps and almost drops her cup of tea.

“What is- Max!” she starts, but he’s already barrelling out of the room. 

He can feel the shackles cutting into his wrists, can taste the sourness of bodies decaying even before they are dead. He’s trying to run - his brain is screaming at him to run, every nerve, every cell, a massive dump of adrenaline flooding his limbs, racing outward like a nuclear shockwave - but his legs aren’t working, his feet are snagged by the chains they’re throwing over him. He falls, landing with a hard splash in tepid water - or maybe it’s blood, a giant pool of blood, he can taste it in his mouth, sharp and oily. Around him, dozens of blood bags are strung up and bleeding out, pale faces and vacant eyes staring, accusing. This is his future, his fate, to be hoisted like meat and exsanguinated, all for the wild-eyed man with teeth like poorly-stacked stones.

“Fool,” one of the blood bags hisses. “You’re a fool for staying.”

“You’ll get what’s coming,” another mouths. “Fool.”

The voices are rising around him, a hoarse, dissonant choir that’s rotting from its chains. “Fool.” “You’re a fool, Max.” “You’ll die right here.” “You can’t help us.” “You’re a fool for trying.” “You’re a fool.” “Fool!”

“FOOL.”

And then Furiosa is in front of him, her human hand clenched hard in his hair, hard enough to hurt and spark tears in his eyes. She gives him a little shake. 

Max blinks, his heart thundering in his ears 

The pool isn’t blood. It’s water, and he’s on his ass in the middle of it, his elbow and his bum knee howling with the impact. Furiosa is white as a sheet, inches away from his face, and he’s not sure between the two of them who’s shaking harder. Capable is up to her ankles, her hands outstretched as if she’d tried - and failed - to prevent Furiosa from lurching forward. 

There’s a moment where nobody moves, and he just stares at her, both of them breathing way too hard. 

Finally, Capable manages, “Are we good? Are we all good?”

He’s not good. He is the exact opposite of good. He is a disaster, a ticking bomb, a landmine in the shape of a man-

“ _Hey_ ,” says Furiosa, and the intensity of her gaze makes him squirm. To his deep embarrassment, he keens with the urge to escape, but she tightens her grip on his hair and holds fast. 

“I need you,” Furiosa says quietly, and no, that’s the opposite of what she’s supposed to say, the absolute opposite of what he needs to hear, but at the same time, he can see exactly how much the admission is costing her. “I need you here. Okay?”

He can’t say yes. He can’t make any promises. His brain is a frothing maelstrom of crazy, and he just needs the white-hot roar of an engine to burn it all away. 

Except he can’t. He has no car. He has no bike. He could run - and he would, right now he’d run until his feet were bleeding and even then he’d keep going - but it’s still flooding and he can’t get out. He’s effectively trapped up here in the Citadel-

“Hey,” Furiosa says again, and he feels her body shake as she tries to stifle a cough. “I’m not asking you to put down roots,” she murmurs, “but I...I’m not running on all cylinders. I need somebody to look out for them -” she jerks her head toward Capable, “and right now, that’s you.”

He knows what she’s asking. He doesn’t know if she understands what it means. He’s already starting to grow roots. He first felt them the day she gave him the killswitch sequence. If he leaves now - truly leaves, like he’d meant to - if he severs all ties, there’s a chance he can still make it out relatively unscathed. The roots will wither, and it’d be easier to cut off his own toes, but he’ll survive. If he stays, if he lets them make use of him, the roots will be fed, and when their entire field burns - and it will, it always does - he’ll end up burning with it. 

“We can look out for ourselves,” Capable says firmly, “but he’s welcome to stay if he wants.”

He doesn’t want. 

He _does_ want. Oh, how he wants...

“I,” he manages, but his throat is too tight and his heartbeat too fast, and Furiosa’s pressing her forehead to his, and she’s too hot and too close and it’s all _too much_ , just too much. 

“I know,” she whispers. 

He can’t see. He can only close his eyes and try very hard not to scream, and Furiosa’s hand is in his hair, and he can’t possibly say if he wants it to be there.


	48. Chapter 48

Max has a panic attack and trips into the pool, and Furiosa gives them all a heart attack by falling in after him. Capable is only tangentially involved - first, trying to calm Max, and then trying not to hover while Furiosa somehow brings him back to earth - but she’s still completely shaken, and feeling guilty for feeling so shaken when it wasn’t even her nightmare to begin with. 

Once he’s out of the pool, Max bolts, wearing a haunted look like he’d once worn the muzzle and not even stopping to dry off. Capable’s instinct is to go after him, but Furiosa shakes her head. “Give him space,” she says quietly. “He’ll be back.”

Dag had said once that he wasn’t crazy anymore, but that doesn’t seem to be true. In the last two days, Capable’s seen it bubble up from somewhere inside of him like sour water. It’s never gone, it’s just lurking beneath the surface. She wonders what it takes for him to stay sane, if there’s anything she or anyone else can do to foster a little calm. 

In the meantime, Furiosa is shivering hard, so Capable wraps her in a blanket and sends her back to bed. She’s still burning with fever, and now that the Citadel isn’t in immediate danger, it’s like her body’s taken the wheel and knocked her straight into neutral, preventing any kind of forward movement. Even now, she’s coughing and blinking and trying not to look miserable, but it’s very clear that the only thing she has the capacity for right now is going back to sleep.

Dag and Cheedo are running out of herbs. For a while it seemed like Furiosa was getting better, but then Atrox came through, and if Furiosa dies because he’s burned all their medicine… Capable tries to be calm, tries to breathe through her nose and to think of how Angharad would react, but she has a deep well of rage, and if anything happens to Furiosa, she’s not sure she won’t go kami-crazy herself. 

It’s not the best of days, just another in a long line of days that could have gone better. 

****

It rains for three days, and then stops, as abruptly as if Joe himself were controlling a faucet. The Citadel is flooding, and so’s the desert around it as the landscape struggles to absorb the inundation. Even the higher levels of the towers aren’t immune; more than once, Capable has to step over deep pools of water, the bodies of drowned rats and lizards floating to the surface. 

Once, there was even a child, gone pale and bloated, but she can’t think about that. The workers talk amongst themselves: “You seen Hela?” “Nit’s gone missing, I’m half frantic.” “En’t seen Misho, can you keep an eye?”. It’s an endless litany of the missing, every name an accusation that somehow, she could have done better. She should have done better.

Keno’s crew of seven is gray with exhaustion, but they’ve connected two of the catwalks between the garden tower and the middle tower, and one between the middle tower and the garage tower. When he comes to give his report, he’s swaying on his feet, and she gently nudges him into a chair, heating a mug of mothers’ milk and sitting down across from him as he wraps scabbed and bleeding knuckles around its warmth. 

“‘S really bad,” he says after a moment, his voice rough with fatigue. “They fucked it up real bad.”

She can’t think of anything to say, so she just reaches over and gently takes one of his hands, smoothing a wet cloth over his fingers, trying to get away the worst of the mud and grease. He twitches a little contact, but then ducks his head in gratitude. 

“The worst part,” Keno continues, “is that they knew exactly where to hit us. They’re War Boys, they’re not supposed to-” He can’t finish, just shakes his head and looks away. “And it’s not like they didn’t know,” he says. “They know it’s us, and we know it’s them, and it’s all a fuk-ushima _mess_.”

Abruptly, he grabs Capable’s hand, his fingers hard as a vice around her wrist. “I can’t ask you if we did the right thing,” he says, “‘cause I know which side you’re on.”

“You can ask,” she says quietly. “But I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”

He looks at her, raw as flayed skin, and so very, very tired. “My brothers are dead,” he says. “Want me to tell you their names? I can. Every single one. Every War Boy, every Pup. Everything we built, now we got to fix, because it’s all bashed to shit. Is that worth your freedom? Was Immortan so bad to you?”

“Everyone dies,” says Capable. “Would you rather die as battle fodder, or as your own person?”

Keno shakes his head. “Fuck this,” he spits. “Fuck all this. It’s over my head, right? I fix what’s broken. That’s what I’ve done since I was a Pup, and that’s what I’ll do until the night sweats shut me down. Wasn’t so bad with Immortan. He was good to us. Gave us more than we could hope for. Maybe it’s worse for you, so full-life and chrome-” he grits his teeth, “but me, I’m half-life. I started with nothing and somehow got lifted up here, and if I hadn’t, I’d’ve been dead or worse long before now. I’ll end with nothing, and if I can fix an engine before I go...that’s all I got.”

She wants to protest, wants to say the right things to help him stop hurting, but the image of the drowned Pup is still burning like an unholy candle in her mind, and she can’t think of anything that won’t sound trite. “Joe was a bad man,” she manages, but it sounds like an excuse. 

“He was a _god _.” The last word is almost a howl, and Keno chokes it back like he’s swallowing poison. “I get it,” he says, “I do. Furiosa’s looking out for us, like she always has, but it’s just...it’s all so much. It was okay until the others came back, and...it’s just hard to see how it’s good, you know?”__

__She does know. Oh, she knows exactly._ _

__“I mean, I never thought I’d have to choose between Furiosa and Immortan,” Keno says. “She’s there. She’s always been there, and she watches out for us, takes care of us like none of the other Imperators do. But Immortan...he’s the one who touched the sun, the one who cheated death!”_ _

__“He cheated death on your back,” says Capable quietly._ _

__His shoulders slump. “Either way, he’s dead,” Keno says, tired. “And we’re still here, and there are things to rebuild.” He lurches to his feet, and gestures to the mug. “Anyway. Thanks for the milk.”_ _

__After he leaves, she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and tells herself very sternly that she’s not going to cry._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not the strongest chapter - I'll be the first to admit that - but I couldn't leave you hanging so long and alksdfjlaksj I am having issues. I have a million little pieces here and there and they're not gelling very well, and also a water valve I _thought_ was fine popped off its pipe stub this weekend during some unrelated demo work and flooded two floors so that's been a bit of a mess we're trying to mitigate. Not my best moment, but funny in retrospect. (It's not an absolute disaster, and everything that got wet needed to come out ANYWAY, so it's just...an acceleration of the demo schedule.) Old houses, gotta love 'em.
> 
> But what do we do? We keep moving!


	49. Chapter 49

The good news is that there’s food. Joe, despite his many failings, at least understood the threat of crop failure, and based on his ledgers, the Citadel has a four-month food supply. 

“That’s for way more people,” Plenty points out, her finger hovering over the number. “He was figuring for a full complement of War Boys, and we don’t have nearly that many.”

Capable frowns, Keno’s lament echoing in her head: _my brothers are dead...want me to tell you their names?_ “So how long are we talking?” 

Jilly, the representative from the kitchen workers, crosses her arms. She’s a slight little woman with one eye, a trio of deep scars folded into the skin of her face. “Just going off the stores, I’d say six months, maybe nine if we’re willing to be a little hungry.” She looks at Nakmin, the gardener, for confirmation. 

He nods. “We’ve got some veggie starts that are still in good condition, thanks for Dag’s efforts.” Her sister looks down. Capable had seen her in the heat of battle, screaming like a feral as she ran up to stab a Flamer burning the hydroponics. Since then, Dag’s been even more quiet than usual, one hand trailing across her stomach as she stares at something that isn’t there. 

Nakmin continues. “We’re flushing the system, but there are quite a few plants that we’re cutting the burned foliage off, and we’re thinking maybe they’ll recover. Up top, things were close to harvest, so they’re gone, but ash is a good fertilizer, and we’ll be ready for harvest again in 90 days or so.”

“People are working too hard to restrict calories,” says Capable. “They’ve lost so much already - let’s not make them starve if we don’t have to.”

Jilly’s already nodding. “That’s what I was thinking. Could even increase rations a bit and still have some in reserve. Might not be much variety, but at least it’ll be filling. We’ll be short a little on cooking oil, but we can figure things out.”

Toast leans forward and taps at the number. “Do our numbers include the Wretched we’re bringing up?”

“We’re not letting them starve,” Capable snaps.

“If we don’t have food, we don’t have food,” Toast retorts. “Look, I’m all for bringing them up if they can help us out, but we can’t exactly afford charity right now.”

“There’s a thousand people down there right now,” Capable interjects.

“And there will be a thousand more right behind them. It will never end-”

“Even if we had all the crops, we couldn’t help them all,” Dag says. “And right now, we don’t even have that.” Her face is hard. “Take all the leaves, the roots wither.”

“So it’s decided,” says Plenty. “We focus on food production. When we have a harvest, we can look at the numbers and see who we can help.”

It feels so cruel, to be sitting up here in her glass-domed tower, deciding the fate of those far below, but Capable understands the necessity of it. She just doesn’t like how much it hurts. 

_Out here, everything hurts_. She hadn’t wanted to believe it. She wants very badly to believe that a comfortable life is possible for everyone; wasn’t that what Miss Giddy had told them about Before? Where everyone had a show, and everyone had enough food and water?

But maybe that’s why the world was killed, because everyone had enough, and men like Joe still strove for more. 

The makeshift council runs through a few more housekeeping items, and then disbands. Dag leaves with Nakmin, leaving Capable and Toast alone at the table. 

“I feel like I haven’t talked to Dag at all since we got back,” Toast admits. “Or you. Or anyone, really.”

Capable nods, and leans her head on Toast’s shoulder. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” she says. “I mean, I figured it would be hard, but I thought...it sounds so naive, but I thought it would be easier.”

“Joe’s a bastard,” says Toast. “Had his claws in deep.”

She presses a hand to her forehead. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Or are we just following Angharad like the War Boys followed Joe?”

Toast is quiet a long time. “I think the difference between Angharad and Joe,” she says slowly, “is that Angharad listened to us. We made the decision to leave, all of us together. It wasn’t something that she decided and then forced us to do.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Toast gives her a look. “I don’t regret it for a second. Are you telling me you want it back the way it was?”

“No!” Capable shakes her head. “I just...we’re losing a lot of people.”

“And we’re right beside them,” says Toast firmly. “It would be different if we were just sitting up here, but we’re not. Dag’s working with the gardeners - did you see how Nakmin deferred to her? He’s seen how hard she’s working, how invested she is in success. I haven’t seen Cheedo for days except in passing, and almost every single one of the War Boys has been patched up by either her or Mari, and they all say she’s so much gentler than Organic.” She spits on the ground, as if even the name leaves a bad taste in her mouth. “You’re bringing people together. Can’t you see that? It takes time, but it’ll be stronger. You watch.”

“I know.” She closes her eyes, and inhales. Toast has been running with the Repair Boys, ferrying tools and supplies back and forth, and smells like sweat and grease and the sharp tang of weld smoke. “I just hate seeing everyone hurting so much.”

Toast chuckles. “That’s your difference, right there. Joe didn’t give a fuck, and he’s dead. We care, which is why we’re going to make it.”

****

Ace is barely mobile, but he doesn’t really have a choice. He’s used to muscling through the pain - he’s a War Boy, it’s what they do - but the slowness is new and frustrating. His leg isn’t broken, but according to the old wasteland woman and the dark-haired Wife, the bullet nicked the bone, and as far as he can tell, the effect is exactly the same. It hurts like hell, it’s hard to move, and right now, he’s doing the job of eight and needs all the mobility he can get. 

When there were five Imperators in the Citadel, he’d had only Furiosa’s crew to manage, and that was fine. He’d even liked it; she was competent - how could she not be, when he’d been the one to train her - and expected her crew not to launch themselves needlessly into Valhalla. They had the highest success rate and lowest casualties of any crew to ever run a Rig. 

Now, the Citadel is in shambles, the other Imperators dead or gone - well, if not gone rogue, then a least gone against Furiosa, and even if he thinks she’s crazy, she’s still the boss, and he’s cast his lot firmly on her side, whatever hell that may bring. Previously, he’d been leaning on Mag to keep the Pups in line, but Mag fell to a Gastown thunder stick, and now it’s up to Ello. 

There are four other War Boys remaining: Ello, Riz, Miro and Target. They’re all painfully young, not even a hundred days into their grease, and the only one to ever ride with an Imperator is Miro. He’d defected from Capto immediately - and what a way to think, of a War Boy switching crews as _defecting_ ; it’s done, but not often, and now it’s defection - and even though Ace is still watching him, the Boy seems desperate to prove himself, to prove he’s reliable. There are six Pups who earned their grease on the terraces, but usually it’s an Imperator who paints it on them, and Furiosa is...indisposed. 

Right now, the War Boys and not-yet-War Boys are helping Keno’s repair team. There are enough catwalks connected that Pups can run back and forth as needed, and in the meantime, there are enough repairs to be done that a full shop could spend a hundred days, easy - and they certainly don’t have a full shop. 

“Prioritize,” Ace had said, because they were all looking to him for instruction, and how the fuck was he supposed to know? He’s not an Imperator. He doesn’t give these orders. “You know better than me. Water, power, safety. Use your heads.”

They’d all nodded, and picked up their tools. They were all dead tired, but Keno had already started instituting shifts to prevent burnout. If Repair Boys were a Rig crew, Keno would make a good ace, probably, if he weren’t so damn young. 

He can’t really help with any of the repairs, and the milk mothers, intimidating as their are, have the Pups pretty well wrangled, so...he goes back to the Vault. He tells himself he’s just checking in, because he absolutely won’t admit to worrying about Furiosa. 

The breeders are gone, and that’s just fine. They make him nervous, if only because they keep offering him things. He tolerates it because they’re Furiosa’s crew as certainly as he is, but...it’s still weird. He doesn’t have to like it. 

The only person there is the old wasteland woman - the healer who was shot - and she gives him a jaunty wave from the common table. “How’s the leg?” she calls out. 

He grunts. She grins. “That’s the spirit!”

The full-life is sitting by Furiosa’s bed when Ace hobbles in, leaning heavily on his makeshift crutches. It’s a disconcerting thing, being in the Vault, and Ace doesn’t like it. He understands that there’s been a paradigm shift, and what he’s doing isn’t forbidden, but it still feels like he’s doing something wrong, like when Furiosa was guarding the Wives on Immortan’s orders, and Ace was skulking in the shadows to give her updates on her crew. 

Ace has seen Boys who lose their edge on the road, Boys who had a bad crash and even though they walk away, some part of the crash still lingers. He sees the same twitchiness in Furiosa’s full-life, the same haunted shadows in the back of the eyes. It would be easy to dismiss the full-life as feral, but it’s not the same.

The full-life meets his gaze and for a beat, he doesn’t move, but Ace sees his fingers twitch toward the gun at his hip. Then, recognition sinks in - he sees beyond the white powder and black grease - and the full-life relaxes a bit. 

“You’re-” the full-life pauses, the effort to speak twisting his face - “her second. Right?”

“Called Ace,” Ace says. He doesn’t trust the full-life; it’s impossible to know whether he’s defending Furiosa, or just defending something he’s claimed. “You?” 

“Max,” mutters the full-life. “My name is Max.”

It’s a strange moniker, that. It wouldn’t be out of place on a War Boy. Max. Maximum. Take it to the max. Maxed out. It’s appropriate for a full-life. 

Ace jerks his chin toward the bed. “How’s the boss?” 

Max shrugs. “Resting, now.”

Furiosa is curled up with her back to them - an oddly vulnerable position, where she’s either too sick to guard herself properly, or she trusts this full-life - with her head mostly buried beneath the blankets. Ace has seen enough Boys shivering through the night sweats to know what it looks like, and it kills him to see her this way. 

It’s not supposed to be like this; she’s a full-life, she’s _strong_ , he’s seen her go from angry stray to Imperator in less than three thousand days, and she’s stayed an Imperator for almost as long as some Boys even live. Even when they’d talked days ago, even when she’d been out of her mind with fever up on the terraces, he’d never seriously thought it would last this long. He’s starting to actually _worry_. 

“You,” says Ace, and it comes out more gruff than he intends. “What’s your purpose?”

Max shrugs again, the movement more like a tremor than a gesture.

The way he’s turned, half to Furiosa and half to Ace, Ace can see just a hint of the brand on the back of his neck, visible just above the worn collar of his shirt. He leans on a crutch and points. “What are you?”

Max twitches. “Blood bag. Mm. Not anymore.” The last part is like an exhale, angry and vehement. 

A blood bag. A blood bag who got out, and came back? It doesn’t make sense. “You didn’t leave. Why?”

His eyes flick to Furiosa, and back to Ace. “Did leave, but...tried to head off the War Party.” He shakes his head. “Didn’t work.”

“But you’re still here.”

Max hums uncomfortably. “She asked.” His mouth works like there’s a longer explanation in there somewhere, but then he shakes his head. “That’s all.”

“She’s not a breeder,” Ace says forcefully. It boils out of him before he can stop, but he knows full-lives, knows what they do to each other. Furiosa is weak, but she isn’t powerless, and if this wasteland feral thinks he can-

But Max is shaking his head. “No no no. Not like that. She- she asked me. To stay. To, mm, defend the girls.” He jerks a shoulder toward the rest of the Vault, indicating the Immortan’s Wives. “Not looking for…” he shrugs, and the gesture seems encompasses every vile act Ace can think of. “Just here for her.”

“Why?” 

“She’s looking for redemption,” says Max, the first complete sentence he’s said, and at that moment, Ace notices the black leather pillowing Furiosa’s head, how she’s nestled into a jacket that he knows he saw this full-life wearing sometime after the battle.

_Oh._

It doesn’t make sense, not really - and how could it, when all he’s ever known are Pups and the shops and the rigs - but she’s a full-life like Max, and even though Max has a brace on his leg and sits like he’s in pain, he’s still subtly positioned between Furiosa and the door, and she has her back to him. She’s sleeping on his jacket - an item of clothing that’s obviously treasured and repaired and defended. There’s a feral energy about Max, but it’s not wanton and destructive; it’s closer to a wild animal protecting its den. Protecting its mate. 

She trusts this wasteland bloodbag enough to sleep with her back to him, and he trusts her enough to come back to the very place he was tortured and give her the most valuable piece of clothing he owns. 

Ace feels a little shaken, like he’s seen a part of Furiosa he’s not meant to. She hasn’t talked about anything that happened between the moment she punched him in the throat and the moment he chose to stand beside her on the lift, but somehow, he knows this full-life was part of it. He doesn’t know how, but there’s a rifle by Max’s knee and a pistol at his waist, so he can make an educated guess. 

“Redemption,” says Ace. What could Furiosa possibly need redeeming for? She’s been a better Imperator than any he’s served under, constantly fed the Pups any spare rations she’d earned, and never been anything other than fair to her crew. She’s achieved more with less than anyone he’s ever seen. 

“Redemption,” says Max firmly, and he folds his arms across his chest, as if daring Ace to contradict him. 

The full-life might be lying, might be using Furiosa’s illness to his own advantage, but...Ace doesn’t think so. Furiosa trusts him. Therefore, Ace will trust him, and if he turns out to be a liar, Ace will kill him and even if it means facing Furiosa’s wrath, he will feel not one shred of regret. 

“Right,” says Ace, and adjusts his crutches. “Well. Tell her I stopped in.”

Max nods, his shoulders relaxing a little. “Yeah,” he hums. “Will do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More patchworking. I feel like I only ever post on weekdays, but I think it's because I do most of my editing on breaks at work, and lordy, some of the things I write before I go to bed really shouldn't see the light of day...
> 
> You're all so fantastic! I feel like I say that all the time, but _it's totally true_ , and cannot be said enough.


	50. Chapter 50

Furiosa drifts. She doesn’t quite sleep - the endless coughing constantly jars her, the instant of panic where her body remembers drowning in her own air - but when she’s awake, half-remembered dreams still cling to her skin and swirl at the corners of her vision. She’s vaguely aware of Ace coming to check on her, his terse voice mingling with Max’s rumbling response. She’s curled away from them and in the aching lassitude of fever unable to move, but some part of her still tenses in concern. A sudden fear wells up that they won’t like each other - and why should that even matter, why does she care - but somehow she needs them to, needs it with a childlike desperation. 

Maybe some part of her is still craving Ace’s approval, like she did when she was newly-ejected from the Vault and staggering. She shouldn’t care if Max likes Ace - it isn’t rational, not when Max has been so deeply, deeply conditioned to mistrust the white paint - but Ace represents part of who Furiosa is, and if Max rejects him, he’s rejecting part of her - 

It’s ridiculous. Max does what he needs to do. He’d proven that when she’d given him the bike - given him a queen's ransom that wasn’t at all hers to give - and then just watched as she sped away into the salt. 

He came back-

 _Why_ did he come back-

Why is he back again-

She must have made some noise, because Max’s hand is on her head, a steady, calming weight, the callused pads of his fingers making rough circles against her scalp. It’s not something she could imagine; physical contact just isn’t something she permits, but she feels herself relaxing. The Citadel is in good hands. Whatever happened earlier - the crazed blur of wild eyes and splashing water - he’ll protect the girls. She knows he will. 

She’s still wearing Max’s jacket, the leather’s dusty scent redolent of diesel and the salty-sour musk of his skin. In the haze of her fever, they’re still in the Gigahorse, the vehicle swaying and bouncing along the terrain. Angharad is there, leaning over her and putting a cool hand on her forehead. 

“Thought you fell,” mumbles Furiosa.

“Sooner or later, we all do,” Angharad says pragmatically. “The question is, how are you getting back up?”

It doesn’t make sense, but Angharad’s watching her with an expectant, almost bemused expression. “Well?” says the woman called Splendid. 

Fury blooms wild and hot, and she’s so angry at Angharad, angry for not holding on, angry for letting go, but no, she’s not angry at Angharad, Furiosa is angry at herself. If she’d fought harder, if she’d been faster, if she hadn’t taken off her prosthetic, maybe she’d have beaten Max and he wouldn’t have shot at Angharad so she wouldn’t have been bleeding and she wouldn’t have slipped-

Angharad had looked so...affronted by the wound. “How does it feel?” had popped out of Furiosa’s mouth, a catty comment loaded with seven thousand days of pain, of hating Joe with all her soul but hating her failure even more, because if she’d succeeded, if she’d borne him a son - if she’d borne him anything - she might have _been_ Angharad, and it wasn’t fair, but there it was.

“It _hurts_ ,” Angharad had snapped, and instantly, Furiosa had been sick with guilt. It’s not Angharad’s fault she’s fertile and Furiosa isn’t, it isn’t Angharad’s fault that Furiosa chose to survive her exile and fight. She can’t blame Angharad for wanting to protect her child. It’s what mothers do; it’s why Mary Jobassa died on the third day, and not the thirtieth, or the three-hundredth. 

The white haze of jealousy fades, and when Furiosa responds, it’s with her own voice, but Katie’s words. “Out here, everything hurts.” She can hear the thumping of the bass across the sand, can see the War Party shimmering in the distance. Angharad thinks they’re all in this together, that Furiosa is one of them, but she isn’t, not really. If they’re caught, at least one of them is going to die, and it won’t be the favorite Wife whose body might be growing Joe’s perfect heir. The first death will be the traitorous Imperator. If they are caught, Furiosa fully intends to maintain that she stole the Wives, that there was no group plan, and that anything the Wives say - any hint of solidarity between her and them - is nothing more than misplaced female loyalty. 

Now, Angharad is dead, and Furiosa is shivering in the Gigahorse - but that’s not right, she’s back at the Citadel-

It’s not supposed to be this way. Furiosa had never really thought she’d see the Green Place again herself, but she knew she at least had to get the women there. If anyone was meant to die, it should have been Furiosa. Angharad was the spittle and glue, Angharad was the blaze of light at the tip of the welding torch, Angharad alone was the one who could speak and make people listen. Furiosa is a weapon. She is a sword resigned to her fate, but Angharad had somehow believed she could be a ploughshare, and because Jobassa’s daughter doesn’t know how to give up, she has no choice but to adapt.

Something breaks in her at that moment, and she’s suddenly too hot and bathed in sweat, pushing at heavy blankets that won’t move, musty fabric that’s smothering her like sand. Max is there to help her break free, muttering, “Hey...hey, ‘s all right. There you go. There you go.”

He cups the back of her head and lifts a mug to her lips, water spilling down her chin as she drinks. It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted, and it flows through her body like a healing elixir, clear and cool. 

****

Furiosa’s fever breaks after sixteen days, and something seems to break inside Max as well. Capable wakes up early one morning to find them curled around each other on the other bed, both faded with exhaustion like ancient newsprint, but sleeping, actual restful, healing sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 50, everyone!! 
> 
> We're celebrating with a little slice of hope.


	51. Chapter 51

Capable is sitting at the common table after a meeting with Toast, Maz and Ello, transcribing her notes into the large bookkeeping ledger she’s taken to keeping. During his reign, Joe had kept meticulous notes - first by his own hand, then by amanuensis, and later still by Corpus. Corpus is instantly recognizable, a firm, confident script that’s almost artistic, after the poorly-spelled scrawl of the amanuensis and Joe’s painstaking, all-capital print. 

Cheedo slides in beside her, setting down a knife and a basket of loose cloth for bandages. “You look pensive,” she says, picking up a length of cloth and making a nick on the selvage. In one smooth movement, she tears a long thin strip.

“I just realized that I’ve been in this Vault for six hundred days,” says Capable. She pushes the book away, and picks up the discarded strip to wind into a ball. 

“We were gone for four,” Cheedo points out, pulling down another strip. 

“I counted for that.”

“You can’t count since we came back,” she adds. “Because it’s our choice to be here.”

Capable puts down the rolled bandage and leans an elbow on the table. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a choice.”

Cheedo cocks her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, all this.” She gestures to the book, to the bandages, to the Vault and the Citadel as a whole. “I mean. We don’t know what’s beyond the salt. The Vuvalini thought we could make it.”

“We can do this, too. We _are_ doing this.”

She can’t put into words her trepidation. On the War Rig, it had all felt so solid and united, even after Angharad slipped, but now, it feels like everything is falling apart. There is no ending point, no mythic Green Place for them to flee to. There is only the Citadel, and no guzzoline and no bullets and a thousand hungry people below begging for food she can’t give them. 

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Cheedo’s arms are around her, a mound of torn cloth heaped between them. “Oh, Capable,” her sister says, “come here.”

It’s childish to cry, but it feels good to be held. “I almost wish we’d never heard of the Green Place,” Capable says wetly. “People have died because of us.”

“More people died because of Joe,” says Cheedo. She presses her lips to Capable’s temple and rocks her a little. “Mari told me something,” she adds, after a moment of quiet. “She said as a healer and a leader, you’re always going to lose people, no matter what you do, and you’re always going to feel their loss. You can’t let the pain own you, but you should make it one of your tools, like a scalpel or needle; it makes you careful, it makes you cautious, and it helps you remember. When you stop feeling it...that’s when you should worry.”

“Every loss is a _person_ ,” Capable snaps. “It’s not something you should just shrug off!”

“I’m not saying shrug it off,” Cheedo says calmly. “I’m saying that you can’t let it paralyze you.” She looks down at the half-torn bandages in her lap. “People die,” she says, and Capable hears the weight in her words, hears the blood that couldn’t be stanched, the injuries too severe to be healed. There’s still a thin crescent of ochre beneath Cheedo’s fingernails, and Capable realized that now that she’s chosen to be Mari’s student, Cheedo’s hands won’t ever be truly clean. 

Joe had called her Cheedo the Fragile, because she’d been such a tiny little thing when Furiosa had brought her in, all birdlike elbows and knees, a starveling girl just barely on the cusp of menarche. That had been two hundred days ago, and sometime between then and now, Cheedo has grown steel in her spine and steadiness in her hands. 

“It isn’t fair,” Capable says plaintively. 

“No,” Cheedo agrees. “It’s not. But that’s exactly why we’re the ones doing it.” She grins. “Ello was telling Toast yesterday we had no business trying to run things, and she said of course we did, because we were Joe’s precious treasures, and didn’t he ensure we had the best of everything, including education? She told him Joe had effectively trained the weapons of his own downfall.” 

Capable manages a watery chuckle. “Toast _would_.”

“It was pretty shine.” She sighs happily at the memory. “He’s pissed, but he’ll get over it. I think he was just mad she’d field-stripped her rifle faster than he did.”

They sit for awhile, tearing bandages and winding them into rolls. It’s early in the day, but the dome is already warm, moisture beading up on the glass. Dag comes in covered in ash from the terraces, but stays only long enough to wash her hands and face before heading back out, dropping a quick kiss on the top of Cheedo’s head as she goes. 

Toast shows up later, dripping sweat and hair askew from calisthenics with the War Boys and the older Pups. “Jilly says it’s beans and witchetties for lunch,” she announces, plopping herself down with a large mug of chilled milk. 

“They’d better be cooked,” mutters Cheedo. “I can’t stand it when they squirm.”

“You sewed up Ferrous’s nasty old finger this morning without flinching,” Toast points out. “And now you’re saying witchetties make you squirm?”

“I hate the way they move in my mouth. It’s gross.”

Her grin is feral. “I like to bite ‘em in half.” She snaps her teeth for effect. “I pretend the tiny ones are Joe’s-”

“ _Don’t say it!_ ” shrieks Capable, but she’s laughing. 

Cheedo throws a bandage roll at her, but they’re all giggling, and it feels like the first time in ages. 

Toast lingers to help tear fabric, and after awhile, Max decides to make an appearance. He looks a little ruffled and discomfited, limping more than usual on his bad leg.

Toast offers him the rest of her milk, but he shakes his head. 

“Is she sleeping?” Cheedo asks.

He nods. “That, mm, salve. Seems to help.”

“Good.” She frowns. “That was the last of Dag’s peppermint, though.”

Max shrugs. “We make do.”

“How are _you_?” asks Capable.

“I need,” he makes a vague hand gesture, “a task.”

She raises her eyebrows. “A task?”

He nods and licks his lips. “Can’t just sit here.”

“What about the Repair Boys?” Cheedo says, brightening. “I’m sure Keno won’t turn down an extra hand.”

Capable hesitates. She hasn’t talked to Keno since the night she gave him milk, and she gets the distinct feeling he’s been avoiding her. He’s been sending Maz or Ferrous to the daily meetings; they’re adamant it’s because he’s involved in supervising repairs. 

Sending Max might give Keno the wrong impression, that she doesn’t trust him. _Does_ she trust him? He’s a War Boy like Nux, but even despite his repeated attempts to capture them, Nux had been a page blank of hidden intentions. He’d wanted only to help where he could, and Keno seems...more shrewd, somehow. She doesn’t think he’ll betray them, but there’s an undercurrent of doubt running through her mind, and she doesn’t know if it’s just general anxiety, or if it has basis in face. 

Nux had been instrumental in their escape, even when he’d initially tried to kill Furiosa. Keno and the other Repair Boys have shown themselves to be loyal to Furiosa from the very beginning, but this isn’t a three-day breakneck run through the desert; rebuilding the Citadel is a long, hard slog that shows no sign of letting up, and more than anything she’s afraid the others will decide it’s not worth the work, and rebel. 

“Go talk to Keno,” Toast is saying. “He’s working with Spade and Cactus on the lower catwalk between here and the middle tower. I’m sure he’ll be glad of the help.”

Max hums and ducks his head in thanks, and ambles out of the Vault, giving a tiny nod to Dag as she comes back in with a basket of canola pods. The garden crew has been salvaging what they can, and she’s saving a few of the undamaged seeds to plant again. She joins the other women at the table, long fingers absently digging through the thin yellow pods. 

When Max is out of earshot, Toast leans across the table. “I saw your face,” she says to Capable. “What was that for?”

“I’m afraid he’s just going to fix up a car and run,” Capable says. She’s trying very hard not be upset - especially when she’s seen how close to the surface Max’s demons run - but it doesn’t seem fair for him to rabbit away whenever he pleases, especially when Furiosa has been pushing herself past breaking to keep them all safe and defended. She just wishes Max would make up his mind: if he’s a mercenary, he should stay because they can pay him in food and water, and if he’s a friend, he should stay because they need him. 

“He’ll stay for awhile,” says Toast confidently. 

“I don’t know-”

Her sister rolls her eyes like they’re all completely missing the obvious. “He wasn’t wearing his jacket, was he? Furiosa’s still got it.”

Cheedo’s eyes go wide. “OH.”

“So he’ll just leave his jacket,” says Capable.

Dag shakes her head. “His jacket’s his skin.”

Cheedo wrinkles her nose. “When you put it that way, ew.”

“It _is_.”

“I think it’s more like armor,” says Toast thoughtfully. “Like how the outside of a beetle is all hard and shiny.” 

“Either way, it’s still part of him.”

“He’d leave it if he could,” Capable insists. 

“He can’t, though,” Toast says. “He needs it, and he needs her.”

“She keeps him sane,” Dag adds. She deftly splits a pod, and tiny black seeds spill into the bottom of the basket.

Capable thinks back to the day Max fell in the pool, and how he’d jerked up from his chair, his eyes wild and unseeing. “I don’t know...”

“Mari says you have to bring the infection to the surface before you can clean it out,” says Cheedo. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe she’s healing him somehow.”

Toast reaches for a pod and holds it like a toothpick. “He’ll stay. You’ll see.”

Capable isn’t convinced, just like she isn’t convinced they’re doing the right thing, or that Keno will ever talk to her again, but her sisters present a united front. It’s comforting, at least, that they have faith, even if she herself can’t quite believe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed up some of the tags again. I’d originally added pretty much everyone I could think of, figuring they’d show up eventually, but now that I’m pretty settled with where the story is going, I adjusted some things. Pretty much if they’re not alive, they’re not tagged (sorry, Nux - I can’t bear take away your historic death) unless they play a significant role in the plot (cough, Joe, cough) or in someone’s character development (Valkyrie).


	52. Chapter 52

The Repair Boys take Max into their midst with the wary reverence of a tribe accepting the sudden manifestation of a potentially vengeful god. They share their names and their tools, but they’re still white with chalk, and his brain won’t allow him to see beyond that, to see the people beneath the paint. He wants to run, every nerve screaming for the open road, howling against the stone tunnels that loom and press against his consciousness, but his bike is gone, swept away by the flooding. He’s stuck here until he can find another vehicle, and his options are to sit and watch Furiosa sleep, his sanity slowly evaporating with each passing second, or bury himself in work, letting the tedium of mechanical maintenance beat some calm into his brain. It’s not the same as the muscle-tenderizing roar of eight burning pistons, but at least it’s something.

He’ll do anything to keep the cloying numbness from taking over, even if that means rubbing elbows with skeleton-faced boys and constantly swallowing against the bile that burns in his throat. 

“You a blackthumb?” one asks. 

He grunts. The answer should be obvious.

“How’d you get to be a bloodbag?” says another. 

He ignores the question; he has blood, what other reason is there?

The Repair Boys are, as a whole, as chatty as a bunch of hens, producing a steady litany of questions, complaints and idle observations as they work. If he’s on his back under a pipe cluster and can’t see them, Max can almost get lost in the chatter. It’s only when a chalky face looms above his own that the panic crashes in, the cheerful “Oi, mate, can I borrow that spanner?” momentarily lost in the roar in his head. 

Sometimes, they talk about him as if he can’t hear:

“Imperator’s bloodbag’s a bit quiet, right.”

“Not a _bloodbag_ , dipstick. You see ‘em fight together? He’s a road warrior, he is.”

“Keno said he stabbed her and made her breathe.”

“Don’t be stupid!”

“He did! Keno, tell him it’s true!”

“Keno, that true?”

There’s a long pause, and the apparent leader of the group shakes his head. “Get back to work. We’ve got lots to do.”

There’s good-natured grumbling, but they do as they’re told. The Boys don’t really make an effort to be quiet in their gossip; gradually he realizes that they’ve lived in close quarters all their lives, so there are no secrets among them. They ask blunt questions and give blunt answers. 

What’s even more obvious is that they are kids, as innocent and eager to please as Capable’s stray War Boy. It’s dangerous, that innocence, and it makes Max deeply uneasy. The Repair Boys aren’t as suicidally fanatic as their counterparts - at least, he doesn’t _think_ they are; they seem a little more grounded, a little more stable - but he doesn’t doubt that the right word or phrase could turn them kami-crazy without provocation. They are all of them closer to the ends of their half-lives than they are to the beginning, and he knows intimately the kind of desperation men feel when they’re dying. 

He works alongside them, feeling every second as though he’s a rabbit surrounded by friendly-faced dingoes, slavering behind their smiles and just waiting for the right moment to bite.

****

At the end of the day, Max comes back to the Vault like a comet, caught by gravity and unable to escape.

Cheedo touches his arm, feather-light and almost apologetic. “I was hoping to catch you,” she says quietly. “Just because we’re on rations doesn’t mean we don’t have enough. If you’re still hungry, just ask for seconds. It’s okay.”

He frowns, uncertain. 

“I’m saying it so Mari doesn’t beat the both of you,” she says, a hint of humor twisting her lips. “Furiosa’s never going to get better if she doesn’t eat. You’re not doing her any favors by helping.”

Oh. That. He can’t stand seeing food go to waste, so he _has_ been...helping. 

Cheedo is right. He knows she’s right. Furiosa is recovering, but she’s still too thin. He looks over at her, the flickering lamplight casting shadows on her face that are far more angular and stark than they should be. She’s deeply absorbed in work, her mechanical arm spread out before her at the common table. If he wanted, he’s sure he could fit the fragile bones of her human wrist in the circle made by his middle finger and thumb. 

(She would break him for trying.)

Cheedo is offering him two bowls of stew. “One is yours, one is hers,” she says firmly. “Can you help me out here?”

He doesn’t want the weight of this, he’s not reliable, he’s-

Cheedo raises an eyebrow. 

Max dutifully takes the bowls. 

He sits across from Furiosa and slides her bowl across the table. She barely glances at it, absorbed in adjusting the mechanics of her arm. It’s been four days since her fever broke, and she’s a damp ball of mucus and resentment. Her eyes are clear, but she’s coughing too hard to sleep and too exhausted to do anything else; she’s bored and cranky and altogether entirely unpleasant to be around. Her hair’s gotten long enough that it’s sticking up in odd tufts from the top of her head, and for some reason, she looks very much like a mutinous baby bird. 

It would not be charitable to laugh, but he can’t stop some distant, hysterical part of his brain from shrieking.

He eats. She works. He can’t tell exactly what she’s doing, only that it involves adjusting the wires at the prosthetic’s shoulder in microscopic increments.

He wolfs down his food without really tasting it, and then sits for a long, silent moment, enjoying the sleepy heaviness radiating from his belly. He is dangerously close to contentment - or what passes for contentment in the dizzy hurricane of his skull - but as soon as he identifies the emotion, it dissolves back into the everpresent anxious fog. The Citadel will kill him, and it will do it with kindness. He will get lulled into complacency, and then in an instant, everything will be fire and blood-

Max forces himself to breathe. Furiosa needs him. Once she’s back on her feet, he can put this place in his rearview mirror - assuming he can find one - and be alone with his ghosts in the desert.

He nudges the bowl closer to Furiosa. “Waste not,” he says.

“Go ahead.” She reaches past the bowl for a screwdriver. “Not hungry.”

He nods, mostly to himself. She won’t take a direct order; that much is obvious. He feels the sharp prickle of Cheedo’s gaze on his back. He’ll have to change tactics. 

After a few minutes of silence, he says, almost as an afterthought, “You know, it’s not easy to, mm, find good fuel.”

Furiosa grunts, two screws held fast in her lips. “Don’t I know it,” she mutters, slotting first one, then the other into place with a practiced turn of the wrist. “The rain left Gastown with some reserves in their cisterns, but they’ll get desperate soon enough, and maybe then we can-”

“Not talking about guzzoline,” he drawls. 

She looks up at that, eyes narrowed in suspicion. 

He indicates the bowl. 

Furiosa blinks at him, and then her shoulders slump, what little energy she has seeming to drain away all at once. He understands. There’s a quickness that comes from starvation, of feeling cloud-light and skirting the knife-thin edge of indistinct, hypoglycemic mania. But he’s had weeks where the emptiness in his belly felt like a burning ulcer, where his hands shook and he’d mixed mouthfuls of water and sand, anything to quell the ache; the first gulped meal had laid him low, stomach cramping and body heavy as it tried to remember how to digest, and he doesn’t wish that experience for her. Especially not when she’s still wearing dark circles beneath her eyes, her lips cracked from coughing. 

“Got to eat,” he says quietly, and, to soften the rebuke, indicates the hearty vegetables, adding, “Could be worse. Could be bugs.”

She - almost - smiles, a brief twitch around her eyes. She looks so fragile sitting across from him, and it’s so incongruous that this is the woman he’d first met, the same one who hadn’t hesitated to point a shotgun at his skull and fire. 

She is the same. He knows this. She’s fighting right now the same way she’d fought then: tooth and nail, with every ounce of strength and every possible weapon.

Furiosa spoons up a mouthful of stew, and chews slowly. Max is still looking at her, face politely blank. She rolls her eyes. “You’re going to watch to make sure I eat the whole thing, aren’t you.”

He hums noncommittally. 

The Citadel is going to kill him, with Furiosa as its weapon, and _fuck_. 

He’s probably going to let it.


	53. Chapter 53

They’ve got the catwalks mostly connected; there are just a few rope bridges that will eventually be replaced, but it’s not urgent. A handful of Wretched have been lifted up and added to the maintenance pool, as well as various workers from other groups within the Citadel. Max has been a de facto Repair Boy for four days, and if nothing else, the routine provides a dull edge that grinds against his anxiety. 

The leader - Max thinks his name is Keno, a short, stocky Boy who doesn’t miss a beat - has sketched a diagram of the windmills on the floor of one of the garages. “-and that’s the high speed shaft,” he’s saying, pointing out the parts with his wrench. “Most of the damage has been to the foundation or the blades, but you’re going to have to scale the tower to check the nacelle.” He eyes a couple of the younger Boys. “Use your rigging. Don’t get stupid - yeah, I’m talking to you, Pit, it’s why I’m looking at you. There aren’t enough of us that we got time to wait while somebody’s laid up to heal.” He addresses the rest of the circle. “You’ll be outside, so touch up your paint or elsewise keep yourself covered. Some of you en’t been up on the terraces before, so I’ll tell you now: sun’s hotter up there, and you’ll burn before you even feel it. We good? Right. Get to it.”

The group is breaking up into smaller crews. One of the other Repair Boys edges up to Keno. “I never ran a crew before,” he whines. “Keno, I don’t know what to do-”

Keno rolls his eyes. “Fuk-ushima, Maz, it’s like you’re still a Pup. Just make sure everyone’s working. That’s what you do. That’s all.”

“But they’re none of them even _Pups_ -”

The leader suddenly looms over his younger counterpart, forehead to forehead. “They’re willing hands,” he growls, “ and we _need_ ‘em.” He cuffs the other Boy on the back of the head, a hard, fond gesture. “Just do it, right? It’ll be fine.”

It’s like watching feral dogs, Max thinks. They have a hierarchy and social rules and they bite each other in affection, but they’ll still tear your throat out if you get too close. 

He hasn’t been assigned to a crew, and Keno waves him over when the others are leaving. “Max,” he says. “We got enough crew topside. I got something chrome for you.”

Max blinks, and swallows. 

They leave the main garage and head down to one of the auxiliary bays. Inside is a battered old semi cab. It’s missing its windshield and the cab doors, and the hood is lifted back to reveal that it’s missing most of its engine as well.

Keno notices the look on his face. “It’s a work in progress,” he admits, “but since Imperator Furiosa left the War Rig in the pass, it’s all we got. The windmills take priority, so I can’t spare anyone else, but you seem like you’d be okay working alone.” He waves an arm around the room. “Tools are all over. Scrap is all over. Take what you need.” He shrugs. “Buzzards hit this one its last run, but it’s still got life. We need it if we’re gonna trade with Gastown, and you seem to be good at this.”

Max huffs. The kindness is unexpected, but he supposes even a wild dog will lick an open wound. 

****

It’s actually a good project. The rig has a V8 that’s in moderate condition, even if most of the rest of it is beat to shit and corroded half to dust. The shop is well-stocked - it’s probably the best he’s ever been in, frankly - and yeah, this is a far cry from his Interceptor, but...it’ll keep him busy. He rolls up his sleeves, pulls out a crawler, and gets to work. 

Sometime later - probably hours; he can’t be sure - the repair crews start to trickle back into the main garage. He can hear the echo of tools and chatter bouncing down the halls. At some point, a miniature War Boy - a Pup, he’s sure the children are called Pups - brings him a plate of food and a bottle of water, and he mumbles his thanks before inhaling his meal. 

He goes back to work, and after awhile, a couple of the younger Repair Boys come in. “Got sent down from the turbines,” one of them says, hanging back a little. “Need a hand?” After a moment’s consideration, Max decides that yeah, he could use some help, and grunts toward the rear of the rig. “Drive train’s fucked,” he mutters, and white faces _glow_ at the prospect of assisting the Imperator’s mysterious wasteland man. 

They’re actually useful, the Repair Boys, scrambling to give him this wrench or that ratchet almost before he needs it. Toward the end of the afternoon, the rest of the crews come back in, and soon, he’s got a small army working with him.

He almost doesn’t mind. 

He’s up to his waist leaning into the rig’s engine when the chatter around him suddenly drops away. He looks up, and Furiosa is leaning in the doorway, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. 

“Boss!” says the Repair Boy whose name Max thinks is Maz. He sounds relieved, and is halfway across the shop before she can wave him off.

“Just here to borrow Max,” she says, finding his eyes amid the crowd. “If that’s okay.”

He wipes his hands on the front of his shirt - not really removing the grease and dirt so much as smudging - and ambles over. The collar of his jacket peeks from beneath the edge of the blanket; she’s layered up like she’s prepared for winter, and he feels - well, conflicted. On the one hand, _that’s his jacket_ , even though he knows full well he’s the one who put it around her shoulders, but surely she knows it’s just a loan? That it’s not something he’s just given, it’s not hers, _that’s mine_ -

On the other hand, seeing the familiar black leather against the tanned lines of her throat sends a wholly unexpected frisson of electricity through his already-frayed nervous system.

Fuck. 

_Fuck_

His pulse is thundering in his ears, his mouth gone as sour as the waste. He can feel the tendrils of her reaching out, grabbing hold and worming their way between the cracks in his skin. He shouldn’t be here, he should-

Furiosa’s human hand is on his shoulder, and he blinks at the sudden contact. “Walk with me?” she says quietly, and obediently he trots after as if drawn by a wire. 

They leave the garage tower and take a catwalk to the middle tower. Inside, the stairs cut into the stone are steep, and even though they don’t stop, Furiosa is swaying a little by the time they get to the top, her prosthetic tucked hard against her ribs. 

Max hums a question. She shakes her head, breathing too hard to actually respond.

There’s another hallway, and another. The towers are warrens, each generation tunneling a little differently into the rock as the rooms’ purposes change. Now, it looks like living quarters; there are Pups sprawled here and there, a Milk Mother walking back and forth with a toddler asleep on her shoulder. She nods at Furiosa, who nods back. 

They get to what seems to be their destination, a hallway where the doors are made of vehicle panels hammered and soldered together. Furiosa gets to one and stops. She points to a series of rivets near the latch. “Watch,” she says, as if he’d be doing anything else, and presses five of them in sequence, the buttons cleverly disguised against the distressed metal. “Got it?”

He repeats the sequence in his head and nods.

The latch clicks open with a thunk, and she leans hard to swing the door inward. 

Inside is a small chamber, a high barred window the only source of light. She toggles a switch, and a bare electric bulb shivers to life in the corner. There’s a deep alcove in one of the walls, a nest of rumpled bedding inside. Against the other wall is a desk, littered with tools and bits of machinery, and another alcove that contains an old-world sink and toilet. There’s a small glass vase filled with dirt on the windowsill, some kind of gravely malnourished vine trailing out and down the wall. 

Furiosa makes a small noise in the back of her throat, moving over to brush her fingertips against the dead leaves. 

This is her room. Max has just been let into her room. 

She turns back to the door and heaves it shut. “The sequence controls the latch,” she says, “and the door bolts from the inside.” She demonstrates. He nods. “There’s running water over there, and the bars are narrow enough that even a Pup belaying down the cliff can’t squeeze in. I suppose they could throw a grenade in, but-” she gestures to a scrap of pale green fabric hanging by the window- “I usually close the curtain when I’m in here. It wouldn’t deflect much, but there’s an overhang-”

She’s nervous. He can hear it as she over-explains. He hums a little, a small noise meant to calm. 

It seems to work. Furiosa looks around and shrugs, almost embarrassed, as if the small room is far less than what she was hoping to offer. “Imperators are granted a little privacy; it’s not much, but it’s quiet.”

She means it’s a place to hide.

He makes himself nod, his throat tight with gratitude. The place smells musty, like old clothes and damp, with a hint of the bright notes of scent he recognizes as distinctly hers. “...’s good.”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” she says, and she’s wrapped in her blanket like she was that night with the Vuvalini. “Mari wants me to stay in the Vault until my lungs get a little better, but...this place is yours, if you want it.”

For a moment, he’s confused. Is this exile? Is she saying she doesn’t want him to stay anymore? Is this her way of drawing boundaries, of pushing him back when he’s gotten to close? But then she picks a dead leaf off the shrivelled plant and gently tucks it back into the soil, and he understands: she doesn’t like the Vault any more than he does, but she’s stuck there until she’s better. She wants to hide as much as he does, and because he’s slightly more ambulatory, she’s offering this space - her inner sanctum, her refuge - because she can’t use it herself. 

“I was worried they’d broken in when I left,” she says quietly, “but they didn’t.” 

“Killswitch,” Max supplies. 

Her lips twitch in a ghost of a smile. “Exactly.”

Everything she values, she protects. What does it say about him, then, that she’s brought him here-

No. Static buzzes at the edge of his sense, and he has to tamp down hard to keep it from reaching a hard crescendo. “This is...good,” he manages. “This is. Mm.”

She scuffs a foot. “I know it’s hard for you to be here,” she says. “And we don’t have any vehicles running right now, but as soon as we do, one’s yours, with all the water you can carry, and whatever supplies we can spare. You know that, right?”

He huffs. It’s not fair. It’s not fair of her to offer these things. He shouldn’t even be here. His ghosts have been largely absent since he’s come back, the noise in his head reduced to the indistinct babble of a crowded room. He’d almost rather be back in the waste, roaring along on the motorcycle, practically pissing himself each time Glory manifests in his path.

He’s spacing out, so he doesn’t realize what’s going on until there’s a flurry of movement, and Furiosa is wrapped back up in her blanket. If possible, the fabric is drawn even more tightly around her shoulders, clenched at her neck with her human hand, and she’s holding his jacket out. 

He blinks. 

“It’s yours,” she says, as if he didn’t know, and doesn’t meet his eyes. “Thank you for letting me borrow it.”

His fingers twitch, the familiar ice-blur of panic warring with the prickling memory of black leather against her collarbone. 

Max swallows hard, and shakes his head. “Mm. No. Just. Um. Hang on to it.” He tries very hard not to notice the way her eyes seem to blaze in the dimness, green and pale like hidden desert plants. 

He’s forgotten how to breathe, and it’s suddenly too hot in here to be wearing a jacket, anyway. 

She nods, once, her throat moving as she swallows, and tucks the jacket back against her body. “I’ll, um, keep it safe,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, and he wonders if her mouth is as dry as his. 

When he comes back to himself, he’s standing in the door of the repair garage, his arms hanging limply at his sides and his mind a white, featureless roar. 

“Max?” One of the Repair Boys waves a wrench at him. “Hey, Max, you okay?”

Max grunts, and catches a crawler with his foot, slinging it toward the Rig. His bum knee pops as he crouches down. 

He’s here. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to stay. No, that’s not right. The urge to leave is a wild animal, chewing madly at the cage of his ribs. He can’t possibly stay, not the way this place is poisoning his brain-

“Steady there, boy,” the old Vuvalini cautions, and he jerks so hard he almost knocks himself out on the chassis. There’s no one there except the Repair Boys, contentedly diagnosing the rear alignment. 

He forces a breath out through his nose, and follows it up with another, until he feels some semblance of calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are PLUMBERS in my house today! Oh what a day, what a lovely day! 
> 
> That's why this chapter is so freaking long. I'm just sitting here listening to them drill holes. Nothing to do but write or [bum around on Tumblr](http://sacrificethemtothesquid.tumblr.com/).


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI - contains a mention of masturbation. Not enough that I felt like updating the tags, though. (lazy writer)

Max works on the rig and tries to breathe. 

At the end of the day, he goes to Furiosa’s room and punches in the door code, fumbling around for the lightswitch. The room is empty, but the blankets have been arranged so they’re in less of a messy pile, and there’s a clean set of clothes and a washcloth draped over the back of the desk chair like an apology. He bolts the door and peels off his clothes; it’s the first time in months he’s had anything close to a bath. The water from the sink faucet is cold and crisp, and even though the chill of the desert night is seeping in through the window, after the smoky, stuffy garage, it feels like heaven.

There’s a half-used bar of soap on the edge of the sink; its creamy suds smell faintly herbal, a sharp scent he recognizes but can’t name. It reminds him of dirt and green and astringent. 

He scrubs until his skin is raw, out of habit only running the tap when he needs to rinse. The only light in the toilet niche comes from the bare bulb in the main room, but above the sink, Furiosa has hung a salvaged sidemirror on a length of wire. Max hasn’t seen his own reflection in months, and his appearance is more alarming than he’d like to admit. He shaves with the edge of his sharpest knife, and is halfway through a phenomenally imprecise hackjob on his hair when he notices the pair of scissors on the back of the toilet. Figuring she won’t mind, he borrows them, but he’s never had much patience for grooming, and the result isn’t any more even, it’s just...shorter. 

It’s as good as he’s going to get. He wipes up the clippings and, for lack of anything better to do with them, brushes them into the toilet. It’s been so long since he’s seen a real toilet that he has to stare for a few long moments, considering it like a piece of unexpected art, and then lift up the tank lid and inspect the contents: the plastic has long since degraded, replaced by metal approximations and gaskets cut from the crude synthetic rubber sheets produced by Gastown chemists. It’s an impressive bit of jerry-rigging, and indicative of an Imperator’s prestige. The toilet in the Vault had been a more common composting type; properly constructed and well-maintained, but not unexpected in the wasteland. 

He wonders if this is the oldest tower, if the Citadel was anything Before. It occurs to him that he doesn’t know anything at all about this place he’s apparently tasked with protecting. 

Sometime after he’d blacked out, Furiosa had watered the plant in the window and it’s perked up a bit, but he figures a little more can’t hurt, so he soaks the washcloth and wrings it out into the vase. There’s another little sprig in a tin can on the desk, and he waters that, too, even though it’s bone-dry and almost certainly dead. 

Now that he’s clean and the herbal soap is still sharp in his nostrils, the funk of his old clothes is readily apparently. He stops the sink with the washcloth, and attempts to launder them as best he can, hanging them up on the desk chair and the window grate to dry. The new shirt is worn, but clean, and the pants look like something a War Boy would wear, black and covered in pockets. There’s even a pair of socks, the fabric well-worn and vaguely floral; it looks like they were stitched together from discarded curtains. 

Max is clean and alone, and he should feel content, but he doesn’t; this isn’t his space, and it makes him uneasy. He’s borrowing it the same way that Furiosa is borrowing his jacket, and instead of a clean trade, he feels the lines of ownership are somehow being blurred. He sits down on the bed, the faint scent of her body wafting up around him from the blankets. The memory of the black leather against her throat wells up, sharp and urgent, bringing with it a swell of confusion...and wholly unexpected warmth that pools in his belly. 

He has food and shelter, and he’s not being shot at. His voices haven’t made a peep since he climbed up the Citadel walls, even though he can feel them like drifting cobwebs in the back of his skull. He is, for the most part, the most relaxed he’s been in a thousand days. 

Max is still functional. Perhaps this is his body reminding him. 

He takes himself in hand and attends to the need with sharp, even pulls. It’s been a long time - he can’t even remember how long. The release is quick and efficient, followed immediately by the acrid sweep of shame. He has no right to imagine her that way. She’s shown him kindness, and he’s using her in his mind, in her own sanctum. She’s given him access to her private space because she’s not using it; otherwise, he’s sure she’d have offered somewhere else, if she’d offered at all. He’s a good mechanic, a strong fighter, and a universal donor; she’s trying to rebuild this fortress, and it’s in her best interest to keep him around as long as she can. 

And here _he_ is, the crawling burn of attachment hot in his chest like reflux. He can feel it worming its way into the black matter of his brain, a gelatinous rot he wants nothing to do with. Sitting in the War Rig, he’d fought so hard against liking the girls, but they’re all of them fierce and funny and so painfully young he couldn’t help it; instead, he’s shoved the emotion as far down as it will go, welded over it and labelled it “protective”, and refused to consider it further. 

But...Furiosa. He can’t feel protective of her. It isn’t necessary. Even when she’d been half out of her mind with fever, she’d still taken on four armed Gastown scouts, and hit him with a solid right hook that’s still sore. She’s a deadly shot, and she doesn’t bother to incapacitate when she can outright kill. She’d asked him to stay because she trusted he could protect the girls, and that’s unfair, he’s not reliable, he’s _not_ -

He flops down on the bed and scrubs his hands over his eyes, determined to sleep. 

 

****

 

Sleep is a difficult run over dangerous terrain, and the ghosts that come are not helpful guides. The room burns and the door won’t open; he can hear voices screaming on the other side, but the bolt is stuck fast. He wakes up with a start, heart pounding. 

He gets up and paces around her room. There’s a small basket of linen scraps under the desk that he hadn’t noticed before, with a sewing kit and a single book tucked on top. It’s been so long since he’s read a book, but the title is _Careful, He Might Hear You_ , and it seems like a warning, so he leaves it untouched. 

He washes his face again - because he can - and lies back down.

Again, the room is burning, but this time, it’s Capable, of all people, pounding on the door, her voice shrill with panic. 

He has to get up check the hallway. It’s empty and dark, silent except for the distant drip of water echoing off the walls. He wonders if the other rooms are for the other Imperators, and if they have Before-style toilets as well. 

He’s too jittery to sleep in the bed, so he sets himself up in the little desk chair, but that doesn’t work either. Before he can change his mind, he’s wadding up his wet clothes and heading out the door. 

He doesn’t mean to go to the Vault, but that’s where he ends up, and Furiosa is standing there in the common room, a blanket around her shoulders and her fingers curled around a mug of tea. She raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t look surprised. 

“I, um.” Max suddenly realizes how ridiculous he must look, with his newly-shorn hair and his damp ball of clothes. He hums in embarrassment. “Hm.”

He shouldn’t even be here. This is stupid. This is-

“You can come in,” Furiosa says quietly. 

He shakes his head. “Mm, no. Sorry-”

“I couldn’t sleep either.” She’s not looking at him, focusing instead on the steam curling up from her tea. “If you want-”

Yes. He does want. Every warning bell in his body is shrilling wildly and he should be fighting this, not giving in, but his eyes dart to the alcove and betray him. 

Her lips quirk, and he wonders if she’d expected him to come back. _Hoped for it_ \- but that’s a thought he can’t finish. 

The bed is only a twin and it’s not really big enough for two, but somehow they manage to fit, curled around each other like engine parts, fully clothed. He's tucked against her neck, her chin resting on the top of his head, and _there’s_ the herbal soap, hanging above the musk of her skin like the damp fog that lingers over the desert in the early morning. He inhales without meaning to, something very much like relief shooting straight to his bones, and her arm tightens incrementally around his back. 

She runs a hand over his stubble. “This is, um.”

“Bad?” he supplies.

Furiosa hums. “I could help. I mean, if you wanted.”

He huffs against her shoulder. “Perhaps.”

Gradually, her breathing slows and she relaxes against him. He’s almost positive she’s asleep, until she whispers into the space above his head, “Why d’you come back?”

_But why’d you leave?_

As if it doesn’t make sense. 

_I didn’t. I was taken as a child. Stolen._

He doesn’t want to be comfortable. He doesn’t want to be here, his face pressed into her shoulder, the scent of her soap on both their skins and filling his chest. No - that’s wrong. He wants all of these things, wants it more than anything he’s wanted in a very long time. He just...can’t. It’s too much. She’s too bright and too close, like the midday sun on a windswept butte, bitterly cold and burning all at once. He can’t possibly stay here. Bad things happen when he stays, people _die_ , and if she-

His hair is too short for her to grasp, but she presses her fingertips hard into the back of his skull, and the pressure in his head is suddenly bleeding off, as if each finger is a valve suddenly open and rushing. 

“Sleep,” Furiosa says. “It’s okay. Get some rest.”

Max does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I am taking SO LONG on these updates. I am so sorry. My brain keeps coming up with AWESOME scenes that are like, fifty days away from where we are right now, but that DOESN'T HELP GET ME FROM HERE TO THERE, BRAIN, DOES IT. 
> 
> I know I said I'd post this yesterday, but it felt totally weird sitting here typing away on my laptop while the plumbers chopped holes in the walls and were working hard, so I ended up guilt-cleaning the rooms they weren't in. Oops?
> 
> You're all awesome for being so patient with me. Bear with me, I promise I haven't abandoned you!


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You lovely people just kill me. You're so NICE. I read your comments and I shrivel up in a tiny ball of delight. 
> 
> (Here's another chapter of our favorite tortured souls. *blows kisses*)

They don’t talk about sleeping arrangements. She offered him the solitude of her room, and he lasted all of four hours. The morning after, Capable gives them a quizzical look when they come to breakfast together, both still yawning and sleep-bleary, and Amy quirks a knowing eyebrow, but otherwise no one comments. 

It seems they both sleep better when their backs are pressed together. His warmth seems to ease Furiosa’s coughing, and somehow, having her there calms the storm inside his head. 

Max does not want to analyze it. He feels like he’s walking around with a gaping chest wound, his entrails quivering and exposed for all to see. 

****

He works on the rig. The white-haired wife - the weird one everyone calls Dag, although that can’t possibly be her real name - commandeers the Repair Boys for some sort of pump system for the terraces, so for an afternoon, it’s just Max and Furiosa. It’s quiet, except for the atonal metal duet of two skilled mechanics. 

If he doesn’t think about it, she’s almost just another person, not someone who is simultaneously the most solid thing he can think of, and also slowly flaying the skin from his flesh with every heartbeat. 

If he doesn’t think about it, he almost forgets that she’s there. 

Max is up to his elbows in the engine when he realizes it’s _actually_ too quiet, and the intermittent grind of his ratchet is the only tool noise he’s heard in awhile. 

Hauling himself back to his feet, he crouches and peers beneath the undercarriage. Furiosa is still lying on the crawler, a spare socket wrench balanced on her collarbone, but she’s sound asleep beneath the rig. 

His lips twitch; he nods to himself and goes back to work. When she emerges an hour or so later, blinking and looking chagrined, he pretends not to notice.

****

After four days’ hard work, they get the rig ready to ride.

Then, it’s time to repair the lone tanker. 

It’s been a long time since he’s held a welder, so his lines start out shivery and thick, but he picks up the rhythm and the blobs even out. There’s a large woman working beside him, her joins butter-smooth and almost invisible against the tank surface. He hums in approval, and she grins. 

“Wasn’t always a milker,” she says. “My pa taught me. Had our own shop, we did. It’s good to be working again.”

Apparently Joe kept the milkers sequestered, and now that he’s gone, in between pumping shifts, the women are free to help wherever they can, and the joy in the Citadel is almost palpable. 

****

Somehow, Max appears at every meal, and she’s coming to expect him across the table. She has no appetite, the food sitting heavy and uncomfortable in her belly, but he sits there and raises his eyebrows and hums and generally makes a nuisance of himself until her plate is clean. He paces himself so it doesn’t look like she’s taking as long as she is. She’s seen the way he eats - like a starving dog, gulping and swallowing with only the barest pause to chew - so she knows he’s doing it for her benefit, and maybe that’s the worst of all, him depriving himself on her account.

She still has no idea why he came back, and when she’s pressed him, he just makes a noise in the back of his throat and shrugs. 

She’s sitting on the bed in the sleeping alcove, her shirt hiked up around her neck as Mari’s gentle hands work across her ribs. “Here?”

“No.”

“And here?”

“No-” She hisses as Mari hits a tender spot, the pain lancing out sharp and white. Her lungs are spasming, so she just nods and bites her fist. 

Mari clucks in sympathy. “Now that you’re not coughing as much, these should finally start to heal.”

It seems like an impossible dream. She can’t even remember what it’s like to inhale without her ribs knifing through each breath. She can’t lean on a future where she might be better; hope is a mistake. She’s still as weak as War Boy at the end of his half-life, and even though she has no intention of dying soft, she still doesn’t quite feel like she’s going to live. 

“Cheedo and I are trying to make an account of the available medical supplies, but the sawbones that was here before,” Mari grimaces, as if the very name is distasteful, “was rather lax about labeling his stock.”

Every interaction Furiosa has ever has with the Organic Mechanic has been carefully sealed in a box inside her head. She doesn’t open the box. She doesn’t even approach it. 

“-jars of white powder,” Mari is saying. “The Pups say he used some sort of code, but we can’t find the cipher. It’s all useless if we don’t know what it is.” She shakes her head. “What a waste.”

“Most of it came from Bartertown,” Furiosa makes herself say. “Once we get the rig fixed, we can make a run, if things with Gastown work out.”

Mari nods absently, now peering at Furiosa’s damaged eye. “Your sight. How is it?”

She knows it still looks bad; she’s seen her reflection a few times, and the green of her iris has been stained brown like a bruise. Bright light gives everything an uncomfortable halo, but she can still see, and that’s the most important thing. “It’s fine.”

Mari frowns, but doesn’t press any further. Instead, she cups Furiosa’s cheek with one hand. “And you, girl. How are _you_?”

Her gaze, affectionate and concerned, is suddenly more than Furiosa can stand, and she feels herself twitching away from the scrutiny. “Looking forward to getting back to work.”

It’s not the answer Mari is looking for. “Are you talking to any of the girls, at least?” she asks. “To Max?”

“I’m getting better. What else is there?”

“My mother used to say that sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Mari says quietly.

“Maybe that was true, Before.” Furiosa pulls down her shirt and shrugs into her prosthetic. She can’t bring herself to meet Mari’s eyes, so she focuses on her buckles. “The sun just burns everything now.”

“The gardens are growing just fine.”

“Not all seeds are meant to live.” 

“Furiosa...” She’s almost escaped, but Mari is swift and has a firm hand around her elbow. “It’s been forty days since you came back to us,” the old Vuvalini says, “and we’ve hardly seen your face.”

“There’s so much to do-”

“You cannot carry this burden alone.”

She arches an eyebrow, but the gesture feels hollow, automatic, a mechanical response made by wires and actuators. Her face is as numb and cold as her prosthetic. “I’m hardly alone-”

The look Mari gives her is searing, like a nuclear flash that goes straight to her bones. 

Furiosa disengages her arm, and is halfway out the door when Mari’s voice rings after her, “We chose to come here.” It’s the tone of an Initiate Mother, absolute and, if Furiosa were still a girl of fourteen, beyond reproach. 

She’s not a girl anymore. She’s not even sure she’s Vuvalini. She’d claimed the lineage when she thought she might have delivered the Wives to safety, but she doesn’t feel it, not for herself, not anymore. 

She’s a survivor. She’s had to be malleable, to take on the shape that will best get her through the day. By the time she’d made Imperator, she’d all but given up, letting her body be the vessel Joe had always intended it to be, to be filled with someone else’s ideology and then driven without comment. She’d been good at her job, and that had seemed like enough, until Angharad started eating away at her shell like a slow acid. 

The Vuvalini chose to come back to the Citadel, but only at Furiosa’s prompting, and now the twelve clans have been whittled down to two old women. They’ve known her since before she was born, but she can’t find comfort in their presence. For thousands of days, she’d endured, knowing that the Green Place was out there, somewhere, even when she’d given up hope of ever seeing it again; now, it’s gone, and she can’t stand the way they look at her, these women who were once her aunties, as if she’s a favorite vehicle damaged almost beyond repair. They should hate her, hate her for the Vuvalini blood that stains her hands. They should hate her for Eleanor and Tamar and _Valkyrie_ -

“Furiosa,” Mari entreats, gentler, but Furiosa doesn’t look back. She can’t look back.

She has to keep moving.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More stitching! 
> 
> WARNING! I'm updating the tags. This chapter contains graphic description of miscarriage and mentions of abortion. If that makes you uncomfortable, I'll put a summary in the note at the end of the chapter, so feel free to skip down and just read that.

It’s just after lunch, and Capable is updating her ledger for tomorrow’s council meeting when Spade comes running in. “Cheedo,” he gasps. “Where’s Cheedo?”

“I’m here.” She pops her head over the balcony, and then takes the steps two at a time. “Let me get my kit. What’s wrong?” 

“Toast.” He’s breathing so hard he can barely speak, the words coming out in a frantic burst. “It’s Toast.”

Capable’s stomach plummets. 

****

By the time they get to the garage, Miro and Maz have escorted the Pups to a different floor. Toast is lying on the ground, unconscious and covered in damp cloths, a phalanx of War Boys hovering around her in a protective, panicky swarm. “Give me some room, please,” Cheedo says calmly, and they skitter back like lizards. 

Ello is on his knees, his face a wild storm of concern. “She just - we wasn’t doing nothing. It’s hot, could be heat-”

“We’ll figure it out,” Cheedo soothes, and runs her hands down Toast’s neck, checking her pulse and loosening the knot on her scarf. Toast groans, already coming around. “There you are.”

“...fuck...”

“No, don’t move.”

Capable settles in at Cheedo’s elbow, and silently offers up a bottle of water. Toast makes a face and takes a few small sips.

“Keep drinking,” Cheedo says. “It’ll help cool-”

Toast shakes her head. “No. It’s not- it’s not the heat, I _know_ it’s not.” She’s trembling and very close to tears. She shoves one fist into her eyes. “I don’t want it. _I don’t want it._ ” She’s half a breath away from hysterics, like a wild animal that’s been backed into a corner. 

Suddenly, Capable knows. 

Capable knows, knows _exactly_ what’s going on, and immediately folds Toast in her arms. The dizzying rush of hormones, the unsettling sense that her body’s been hijacked, despair and relief dueling in her chest: _oh no, not again_ and _maybe this time it will save me_. She catches Keno’s eye, and he nods, snapping his fingers at the other Boys to get them to disperse. 

The timing makes sense - it’s been thirty seven days since their flight from the Citadel, and Toast has never been subject to morning sickness like the rest of them. Cheedo’s expression is grim; Ello is staring at all three of them in bewilderment. 

“Oi, ain’t that bad, right?” he hedges. “Shiny full-life, she’ll be right, yeah?”

Toast _screams_ and lurches up with a furious right hook, but he tumbles back on his ass, crab-scuttling away. 

“I was just saying,” he snaps, eyes wide with alarm. “Mad bitch, it’s just _said_!”

“You don’t fucking _know_!” she yells back. “You don’t know anything!”

“And you called the Knowing,” he retorts. “Maybe tell me, then!”

“We’ll figure it out,” says Capable fiercely. “Toast. We’ll figure it out.” 

“No!” She shakes her head, adamant. “Kill it. Kill it or I’ll - I’ll do it myself. I’ll claw it out. I’ll fucking die before I let any part of _him_ feed off me.”

Cheedo frowns. “I’ll talk to Mari-”

“It gets done,” Toast insists. She’s pale as a War Boy, but her eyes are hard, black steel. 

Ello is edging back toward her. “Look, don’t tell, that’s fine. But you got us, right?”

“The fuck you doing,” she says, hugging herself. “Go away. This doesn’t concern you.”

“You sure? I can-”

“Fuck _off_!”

“Right, right!” And he stalks off, but tears are streaming down Toast’s face, and she buries her head in Capable’s shoulder. 

 

****

 

When she can walk, they head back up to the Vault, where Mari and Dag are sorting seeds at the common table. Dag immediately leaps up when she sees Toast’s face. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

Toast has been furiously gritting her teeth, but she can’t hold back a fresh flood of tears. “I don’t want it,” she wails, fists clenched hard at her stomach. “I didn’t want it and I don’t want it and-”

Dag’s hugging her hard, pale fingers twisting in dark hair. “There are ways,” she says fiercely. “Keeper told me. There are herbs-”

Toast reaches down to brush her knuckles against Dag’s belly, and the gentle swell that’s only become noticeable in the last few days. “Why haven’t you...?” 

Dag’s hand closes over Toast’s. “It might be a girl,” she says quietly. 

Toast’s lip wavers, and more tears spill over. “I can’t,” she croaks. “I can’t - not even then. I’m sorry, it’s Joe, I _can’t_.”

“No, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Dag presses her face into Toast’s hair. “Don’t be sorry, it’s your choice, it’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” Cheedo repeats. “It’s okay.” She looks at Mari, who’s risen and is unsteadily balanced on her makeshift crutch. “Right?”

“Of course it is,” says the Vuvalini. She purses her lips, thinking. “It’s not easily done, not with the supplies we have, but-” she’s already crutching off in the direction of the baskets and bags of herbs she and Cheedo and Dag have collected- “I’m sure there’s _something_.”

****

Mari makes a tea.

Toast makes a face, but sucks it down. Within an hour she’s cramping; within three, she’s on her knees in the pool, supported by Cheedo and Dag as her body clenches. The water around her swirls red, but the expression on her face is one of determination and triumph. 

Capable can’t stay. She can’t watch. Twice she’s felt the sick elation, only to end up with useless blood and tissue. The second time, she’d reached down and found the fetus in her hand, a misshapen mass, translucent gray flesh stretched impossibly thin over its bulbous little head. 

It had been Joe’s, but she’d still mourned, and when Angharad’s belly had swelled, healthy and golden like the moon, Capable had tried so hard not to be jealous. It’s all tangled up in her head - her loathing for Joe, her love for Angharad, and the ache for an infant of her own, something she’s known since she was three thousand days old. She’d held her tiny half-sister then, still wrinkled and damp, and fallen in love instantly; later that night, her aunt took the baby outside, and came back alone. Capable hated Joe - hated everything about him, hated how he patted their heads as if they were simple, hated the sourness of his body and the way her skin smelled of him for days - but if she’d borne him a living child…

Furiosa comes back late, when it’s gotten so dark Mari’s turned on one of the bare electric lights, small moths flickering around its bulb. She looks bone-tired, but shakes her head at the offer of food. Toast is over the worst, and has been bound up with linens and tucked into bed. 

“There’s a War Boy lurking outside,” Furiosa says mildly. 

“I’ll go talk to him,” Capable quickly offers. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say, but anything is better than staring at her ledgers, her eyes blurring from fatigue. She especially doesn’t want to talk to Furiosa; she remembers the blood on Angharad’s hands, of the then-unknown Imperator’s fury. 

She’s ninety percent sure that Furiosa is different now, that she’d be sympathetic, but...Joe’s programming runs deep, and even though Furiosa fights it, she’s still fighting it - they all are - and that’s the point. Furiosa still thinks of herself as an Imperator, and Capable is never sure how that will color the other woman’s reaction. After the run, she’d been convinced Furiosa had changed, but then Furiosa had strung up that War Boy after pulping his skull with the butt of her rifle; now, Capable remains deeply wary, having truly seen the violence that lurks beneath that implacable facade. 

To her surprise, it’s Keno pacing in the hall. “Oh,” she says. She hasn’t talked to him in days, and even though she likes Ferrous and Maz well enough, and found them to be wonderfully competent, she’s _missed_ Keno’s solid presence at the morning meetings. “I thought you’d be Ello.”

He shakes his head. “Told him to sleep. He’s been all but useless, half-crazy with worry.” He jerks his chin toward the Vault door. “How, uh, how is she?”

“Sleeping,” says Capable. “She’ll be okay in a couple of days.”

Something loosens in his shoulders, and Keno scrubs a hand across his eyes, huffing a breath. His white paint is flaking off at the corners of his mouth, the creases of his body, and underneath, his skin is dark like the burnt earth in the terraces. He goes to the wall and slides to the floor, leaning back against the stone, and she sits beside him. His shoulder against hers is warm in the cool damp of the hydroponics hall.

“Ello doesn’t understand,” he says after awhile. “He’ll ask questions, and I can’t guarantee he’ll like the answers.”

“There’s nothing to answer for,” Capable says firmly. 

Keno turns his head to her, quirking one chalk-crusted eyebrow. “He’s a War Boy, and they’re a different bunch, but those of us in the Repair Bay see all kinds. Ello might not get it, but I heard what she said.”

“It’s Toast’s business, no one else’s.”

“You’re breeders,” he says bluntly. “Breeders have babies.”

“We aren’t _things_ ,” she flares. “We won’t be bred like animals.”

He scrunches up his face and chews his lip. “Look,” he says desperately, “things are changing. I get that. It was bad for you, right, and I see that. But it wasn’t bad for all of us, and it’s a hard thing, to accept what you say about the Immortan-”

“It’s not just about who had it bad and who had it good,” says Capable. “It’s that none of us had any agency.”

“That’s my point!” He flings out a hand. “You come in with big words, but Daddy had big words, too, and how am I supposed to know whose are right?”

“Agency means you can act for yourself.”

“I had that then, and I have that now,” he insists. “I have my crew. I have salvage. I have tools and food and a place to sleep. I won’t die historic, but...if I really wanted to, I’d just have trained harder. I’d learn to drive better.”

Somehow, he’s not getting it, and she knows she can explain it better, but she’s too tired, and the gulf between them seems insurmountable. She pulls her legs to her chest, resting her cheek on one knee. “It’s Toast’s business,” she repeats. “If she wants to talk to Ello, she will.”

Keno seems to deflate. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I’m not saying we don’t support you. I’m just...I dunno. It’s Immortan’s _child_. How could you not want that? How is that anything but the biggest honor?”

The thought of Joe between her thighs rises up hot and sour like bile. She can’t handle this. She can’t handle this right now, and maybe she can’t ever. She shoves herself to her feet, her throat burning, but Keno’s hand clutches hers. “I’m sorry, sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean - fuck, I’m sorry.”

She sits back down, a careful inch of space between them. He’s still holding fast to her hand, and despite herself, she lets him continue.

“I’m not blind,” Keno says quietly, smoothing his fingers over hers. The palms of his hands are clean and callused, the color melon-bright and unexpectedly rich. “The more I see, the more I know he hurt you. I don’t understand how, because you were so treasured and protected, you even got to _be_ with him, but you’re still hurt - all of you - and the only thing I can think of is that somehow, you saw something of him that the rest of us didn’t.”

_He’s a miserable old man,_ Capable wants to say, but the words are too thick and heavy, clotting in her throat like blood. 

“And Toast…” Keno shakes his head. “She’s one of the toughest people I ever met, and today she looked so _scared_.” He ducks and looks at her sideways. “Sometimes we get Pups real small, and they en’t scary. They’re just little and terrified, and all they want to do is be held. And if it’s Joe’s...that’s _better_ than a half-life get, right?” 

She thinks of the Pups, of their warm, chalky bodies as they snuggled close, and then of the deformed, wrong-limbed masses she’s seen birthed in the Vault. In her first hundred days, the atmosphere had been almost festive - four of the seven Wives were heavy, and Joe was almost giddy with the possibility of so many perfect sons. Within a single cycle of the moon, all four Wives were exiled or dead, and Capable had stopped feeling lucky. 

“He’s had hundreds of Wives,” she hears herself say. “Have you ever wondered why he only had three sons?”

“Wasteland breeders are crooked,” Keno says automatically, and quickly adds, “I mean, that’s what we’re told.”

“Nena had two other children.” Capable stares into the middle distance. “She talked about them constantly, how bright and beautiful they were before she was stolen. She had three miscarriages, and then Joe threw her off the lift. Dallie had two perfect daughters, but he drowns the girls. The third time, she had a boy, but he was missing half his head.” She ticks off the others on her fingers. “Mappa had three boys, all stillborn. Babble had twins that were stuck together at the neck. Gip had a miscarriage, and died after bleeding for twelve days straight. Dav had a boy with his lungs on the outside of his body.” These are only the ones she saw herself, before Angharad came and made the women into sisters. The births that happened inside their circle are not something she’s ready to share. 

She looks over at Keno. He’s gone utterly still. “Joe was the one who was crooked,” she says. “The things he makes aren’t babies - they’re monsters.” 

He’s still gripping her hand, and it’s too much. She pulls away and hugs herself. She’s thinking about Toast, about the blood in her own body, and how much simpler her life would have been if she’d had Toast’s certainty, her conviction. Not easier, not necessarily better...just simpler. 

“You,” says Keno, a breathless word like he’s been hit in the chest and is only starting to recover. “Capable. You?” He’s afraid to ask - she can see it in his eyes - because he suspects and dreads the answer, but he still somehow needs to know. 

“If it happens early, it’s just blood.” It feels like she’s talking through glass, down a long and echoing hallway. As if she’s not the person involved, as if it’s just a gruesome story about someone else, not the lumps of flesh that fell from her womb. “It’s almost better if it’s early. If it’s later, you can see how it might be a person.”

The thing she hates the most is that she’d still _wanted_ it, the terrible deformed thing in her bed, and had been devastated at its loss.

It must show in her face, because after a moment of hesitation, he folds himself against her. There’s a brief moment of panic, but he’s acting on instinct, curling up next to her like a sympathetic Pup. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t tell Ello,” she says quietly. “If Toast wants to share, she’ll share.”

He takes a breath, nodding. “She’ll be okay, though, right?”

“I think so.”

He’s quiet awhile, the only sound coming from the rush of the hydroponics fans. It’s chilly, and she’s left her sweater inside the humid Vault, so she leans her head on his shoulder. “I hope you don’t think I’ve been avoiding you,” he says quietly. “We’ve got so many new black thumbs, and I need Maz and Ferrous to be able to take on their own teams soon.”

“I thought maybe you were mad,” she admits. “We came back and fucked everything up. You’d have every right to be.”

Keno snorts. “Not gonna lie and say I’m not,” he says, “but I’m here. Who’s doing the leading, that’s for someone with more grease.” He shrugs. “I fix stuff.”

“You do more than that.”

He looks at her, surprised. “You think?”

“You’re running the shops,” Capable points out. “You’re keeping everyone busy and in line. I know that’s not easy.”

“Oh.” He considers. “I guess you’re right.” He gives her a sidelong glance. “Um. You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“It’s hard to make changes,” she says. “It’s hard for us, too.” Capable shakes her head. “Of course I’m not mad. But if you want to talk, you should come find me. I don’t want something to just...fester.”

Keno nods. “Yeah. That’s good.” He grins a little. “Um. What if...what if I’m not mad? What if I just want to see you?”

Oh, that feels like hope, and it’s a sweet ache in her chest. She presses her face into his shoulder. “Yes,” she says, “I think that’s okay, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Capable and Cheedo are working on stuff in the vault when Spade comes in. Toast has collapsed while working with the War Boys, so the girls go running to the Garage Tower. Toast comes around and freaks out, has a huge fight with the very concerned Ello, and Capable realizes that Dag isn't the only one Joe impregnated before their escape. Toast immediately demands an abortion, and Mari brews a tea. 
> 
> Afterwards, when Toast is resting, Furiosa comes in. Capable remembers Furiosa's reaction to Angharad's attempted abortion, and worries. Capable goes outside to talk to the War Boy pacing in the hallway; at first she thinks it's Ello, come to check on Toast, but it's actually Keno, who she hasn't talked to in days. They have a long discussion about how Joe is damaged and produces damaged offspring, and Keno is starting to realize that the Immortan was kind of a terrible guy. Keno and Capable come to an agreement, and decide to keep talking, no matter how much their views may diverge.


	57. Chapter 57

Furiosa doesn’t know what’s wrong, but the girls are instantly on their guard when she walks in. She’s exhausted, barely upright, but the tension in the atmosphere is obvious. Capable all but runs out of the Vault, refusing to make eye contact, and Cheedo and Dag are bristling with protective anger. 

“Don’t hurt her,” Dag spits out. “It’s her choice. Don’t you dare.”

Furiosa blinks. “What?” The garage had been buzzing about some kind of incident, but she’s still so tired, and she’d been concentrating on getting through her work. 

Mari leverages herself to her feet. “Toast asked me to bring down her blood,” she says calmly. “I made her a tea. If there’s anyone to take issue with, I accept the blame.” 

Three sentences, but it’s a mountain of information to take in and process. Furiosa staggers a little under the load. “Is she alright?” she says, looking around. “Is Toast okay?”

“She’s sleeping,” says Cheedo. 

“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Dag repeats. 

She doesn’t understand, until she sees the way the girls are edging between her and the stairs, how their bodies are taut and ready to defend their sister. Of course. The moment with Angharad, just another in a long list of situations she’s not proud to have been involved in. “Joe would have killed her,” Furiosa says tiredly. “He would have killed all of you, and then he would have killed me. He’s gone.” She shakes her head. “Toast gets no argument from me.”

Everyone’s posture relaxes, and Mari eases herself back down, propping up her injured leg. “Will you come sit?” she asks, patting an empty chair. “There’s food left - have you eaten?”

The sharp tang of juniper mingles with the heavy scent of blood in the damp Vault air. All at once, Furiosa feels completely exposed, her heart pounding as if Joe is right outside the door, coming to discover the destruction of his property and the betrayal of his Imperator. It’s not true - she _knows_ it’s not true, she saw his death with her own eyes, caused it with her own hand - but she’s lost control of her body, her pulse hammering in her throat. 

Now Cheedo’s looking at her with concern. “Furiosa? Are you all right?”

Suddenly, she knows how Max feels when he has one of his attacks. Her body is screaming at her to run, but everything below her neck is cold, her limbs gone numb and unresponsive. Somehow, she makes it to the door, her feet disconnected from her ankles and the ground, the girls trailing behind her like smoke. 

“You don’t have to leave,” says Dag. 

“I’ll be in my room,” Furiosa hears herself say, her voice tight but otherwise deceptively normal. “She can have her space.”

“It’s your space, too,” Cheedo insists, but Furiosa is still moving, drifting like a satellite as it burns through the sky. 

Somehow, she makes it to the middle tower, but her hands are shaking so badly it takes four tries before she punches in the correct keycode. Once inside, she drops the bolt into place and tugs off her prosthesis, frantically digging under the mattress for the spare shotgun and its stash of shells. 

Once she has the gun in her hands and her mechanical arm on the floor, she can start to breathe again, the panic gradually bleeding away. She coughs and swallows, the knot in her throat slowly easing. The adrenalin dissolves, leaving a trembling, chilly lassitude in its place. She feels wire-thin and as brittle as over-tensioned glass, ready to shatter at the slightest jolt. 

She’s out of control, and furious and terrified all at once. She’s stronger than this. She _knows_ she is. She breathes through her nose - going to her center, like Katie had said - but _Katie hadn’t been with the remaining Vuvalini_ -

That’s a blow she doesn’t see coming - even though she should have, she should have known, she should have _known_ \- and it hits like twelve tons of speeding metal, shattering the bones in her chest and sending the fragments to flay open her lungs. All of the air in the world suddenly isn’t enough to fill the cavity inside her, and she presses her human hand to her heart as if trying to forcibly keep it intact. 

Twelve clans whittled down to two old women, the Green Place poisoned and bitter, the Citadel still sifting through its ashes...these are the things she’s seen, the things she’s had a hand in doing. She’s just spent all day in the Repair Shop trying to cobble together a tanker from scrap metal, and but at the end of the day, this is where she is: a crumbling city in an endless desert, the unforgiving sun bleaching the bones of the women who came before her. Joe raped and pillaged and murdered to keep his godhood, and because she’s been his vehicle, by extension all of his deeds rest on her shoulders just as surely as they rested on his. The girls are right to fear her. They’re all right to fear her, and why they haven’t tossed her off the lift platform yet is anyone’s guess. 

She’s so lost in her own head that she almost doesn’t hear the latch try to open, almost doesn’t notice when Max hits the deadbolt. He doesn’t say anything for awhile, just scuffles his feet and then calls quietly, “You there?” There’s a long pause. “The girls said you’d, mm, left.”

The urge to stay silent is almost overwhelming. It would be so easy to pretend she doesn’t hear. It would be easy to not let him in, to make him sleep alone - another casual cruelty to add to her long list of sins. 

The scab at her elbow has long fallen off, but his blood still flows in her veins. It’s a gift she didn’t ask for, a gift she would never have accepted, not when she’d seen the history of his use in his eyes, in the morbidly cheerful moniker - “Blood Bag” - that Nux had bestowed upon him. He came back when she’d needed him against Gastown and the Bullet Farm, even if neither of them are quite certain why. 

And...he’s warm. She’s shied away from human contact for the last seven thousand days, but somehow he’s broken through, and she doesn’t have the strength to deny that she could use a little comfort, even if she knows she’s utterly undeserving. 

Using the shotgun as a crutch, Furiosa hauls herself to her feet and slides back the deadbolt. It’s dead black both inside her room and in the hallway, but Max has a small cranklight, the sickly white glow casting his face in War Boy monochrome. 

His eyes skitter across her face, to her naked stump and back up. “Hey,” he breathes. “Hey.”

The hallway blurs, and she’s distantly mortified to realize she’s actually crying. 

Instantly, his arms are around her, firm and grounding, and he’s in the room, bolting the door and leading her to the bed. The cranklight sits on the desk, throwing stark shadows around the room. Max cradles her against his shoulder. “Hey,” he says again, but it’s a meaningless word, just a syllable of comfort that rumbles through his chest and into her jaw.

There’s not enough air in the room again and her face is hot and damp against his shirt, but she can’t stop, each convulsive breath setting off another just as ragged and wild no matter how hard she clenches against it. Max just hums and holds her and palms her head, and there’s so much undeserved kindness in his touch that she aches that much more. 

How did she get here? Is she such a pathetic thing that she’s now relying on the kindness of a man she’d tried to kill? There’s still a pink scar on the side of his head from the powder burn - she’d done that, had put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, when he’d been trying to escape just as she’d been. If she hadn’t missed, where would they be? Would they have made it?

If _he_ hadn’t missed, if he’d shot to kill when he had her in the sand-

“Don’t,” Max mutters to her, his fingers hard at the back of her neck. “Whatever’s in your head. Just...don’t.”

She makes a small noise. It might be misery, or confusion, or just a backstabbing Imperator and traitoring daughter having a breakdown. 

She doesn’t know how long they sit there, but eventually, she’s wrestled herself back under control, and Max gets up and bring back a cool, damp washcloth and a cup of water. He offers her both of them, and smooths back her hair as she hiccups and blows her nose. Her face feels huge and swollen. 

“Brought some food,” he says, and procures half a loaf of flatbread from one of his pants pockets. “Might help a bit, mm?”

There’s a headache settling in behind her eyes, but she’s as hollow as an empty tanker, so she accepts the bread and starts to eat, slowly tearing off small pieces that she chases with a sip of water. 

“Girls are worried,” Max says. “Cheedo, mm. Told me about before. About Angharad.”

Furiosa tries, but she can’t bite back the shudder that ripples through her body. 

“I, mm, talked with Toast,” he continues, searching her face for a reaction. “Seems she’s feeling a bit better.”

“Good,” she makes herself say. “That’s good.”

He runs his thumb across her cheek, a quiet little gesture she’s not even sure he’s aware he’s making. “You, mm.” His gaze trips away. “Want to talk any?”

No. She doesn’t. Not to him, not to anyone. She shakes her head. She doesn’t care what Mari said; everything feels as brittle as sun-rotted plastic, and any more light will just make her crumble to pieces.

“S’okay if I sleep here?” He touches her so gently, but never presumes. She feels her eyes start to flood again, and presses hard against them with the heel of her hand, nodding because she doesn’t trust herself to speak. 

He gets up and does a little tidying, picking up her prosthetic off the floor to hang on its hook by the bed. Furiosa is bone-tired and wrung dry, and when he settles in beside her, she lets him guide her down to sleep. 

“You know,” he says quietly, his breath warm on the back of her neck, “the hardest days, mm, they’re not the ones with the fighting.” His arm is a comforting weight over her body, his fingers absently moving in her hair. “People like us…we just gotta take it one day at a time, mm?”

Furiosa suddenly remembers him stumbling through the mist, covered in someone else’s blood and dragging behind him an impossible wealth of salvaged supplies. The explosion in the distance had lodged her heart in her throat, but he’d come back. He can kill a man and cradle her head with the same two hands, and she’s seen exactly how it’s shredded him. 

Is this what it means to be a person? To feel this broken and torn by the things that she’s done? It’s easier to be a machine, a vehicle, to imagine that she’s gauges and steel instead of sinew and bone, but something is happening. She’s losing her metal self, feeling it sloughing away like scar tissue, and it’s terrifying. She doesn’t know how else to be. 

She’s shaking again, and Max presses his lips to her scalp, humming gently. 

Furiosa wants to ask if it gets better, but she’s seen the answer in his blank eyes, so she just threads the fingers of her human hand through his, and holds on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a lighthearted filler piece before the next Council meeting, but...oops. Have some angst and snuggling instead.


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag updates! Ye be warned.

The nightmares are the worst she’s ever had. She wakes up a dozen times, biting down hard on the screams that bring Max to dazed awareness beside her. He curls around her body, humming against her shoulders and trying to ground her with his body, but it never works. The second she closes her eyes, she’s back in the Vault’s upper hall, standing in the doorway of a tiny sleeping cell where Toast or Angharad or a Wife from her own long-buried breeding time sits on the floor howling epithets, knees clenched tight on a river of blood as the other Wives tear at Furiosa’s skin in rage. Joe’s footsteps are an inescapable, terrifying cadence on the stairs, and somehow, Max wakes her just before Joe finds out. 

Morning finds her feeling headachy and hungover, her mouth stale with the taste of old blood from a bitten lip. Max’s arm is stretched out beneath her head, and the room is pale with the gray filtered light of early desert sunrise. She’s still so tired - she can feel the fatigue infecting her bones, flaccid and aching - but there’s no peace to be found in sleep, and she’s awash with a strange restlessness that spurs her up.

Max isn’t asleep either - she can tell by the cadence of his breathing - but when she eases out of bed, he rolls over, putting his back to the room and letting her have the fiction of a solitary toilet routine. Furiosa isn’t particularly self-conscious - not after living with the War Boys - but she is intensely private, and right now, she just wants to be alone. The fact that Max is still in her room grates on her skin like sand in her prosthesis.

She should be courteous and tell him that she’s leaving, but she can’t summon the energy for even that small socialization, so she just bundles up in the blanket that’s fallen off the bed, and slips out. 

It’s early, but the kitchens are bustling. She can hear the noise, bright and warm as it tumbles down the hallways. She wants tea, but doesn’t want to deal with talking, so she skirts the main living spaces, taking the back stairs to the top of the tower. 

In the terraces, she’s above the mist, the clouds spread out over the desert like still, gray water. There’s no sound from the people below, only the whisper of light breeze through the charred stalks. It’s a moonscape of burnt fields and red stone, and for a dizzying moment, she imagines she’s the only human left in existence. 

On a whim, she climbs one of the maintenance cranes, a birdlike urge to be elevated buzzing in her chest, and curls up in the netting at its apex, the blanket high around her shoulders. The wind is cold on her face, and she thinks of Valkyrie, tall and tan and gorgeous in the honey trap, surrounded by the flash of broken mirrors and the undulating cloud of her dark hair. 

Oh, she _misses_ Val. She feels like a peach stone that’s been cracked open, the poison tenderness inside shrivelled and malignant. 

She wonders if she’s having a breakdown. She wonders if this is a new stage of the lung fever, burning through her brain, or if she’s truly gone half-life, her gray matter riddled with tumors and slowly swelling into madness. Everything feels heavy and sodden, every breath an impossible effort, the sharp reminder of her healing ribs as intolerable as an exposed nerve. She’s drifting, an errant bit of dried leaf caught in the slow movement of the mist.

Later, when the tallest dunes have started to seep through the endless gray, Max finds her; she doesn’t bother to wonder how. He stands at the base of the crane, looking up at her with an expression of resigned concern, and then reluctantly makes the climb, settling in beside her in the operator’s nest. 

They watch the sun come up, burning red as it rises over the broken teeth of the mountains. He chews on the inside of his mouth, obviously trying to put words to something in his head. 

Finally, it comes out. “This isn’t a good way,” he mutters. “If that’s, mm, what you were thinking.”

Furiosa frowns. 

He jerks his chin toward the ground below. “Too soft, not enough height. Break a bone, maybe. Neck if you’re lucky and hit just right, but that’s, mm. That’s a gamble.” His eyes are as gray as the mist, flickering beneath his eyelids as he struggles to hold her gaze. “But you already know that.”

“I’m not going to jump,” she says, but all the same, there’s a thrill through her body, a sick frisson of adrenalin at the possibility. 

Max regards her steadily, because he doesn’t believe her, and she doesn’t either. 

Fuck, she’s going to cry again, and that’s - that’s just the absolute end of it. Hot tears are streaming down her face, and she’s split into a thousand sharp little pieces, and she’s so fucking _frustrated_. She’s coming apart like ragged fabric, the fibers dissolving at the slightest touch, and she hates it, hates that she’s as out of control as a raging gasfire. She hasn’t _ever_ felt this volatile, not even when the Mechanic was injecting her full of hateful concoctions he promised would make her conceive. She’s survived that and so much else, and how is it that _winning_ is what’s tearing her apart?

Max hums and presses his lips against her temple, and lets her scream into his shirt. She doesn’t have the strength to fight it like she did last night, so she just gives up and rides it through like a fever, fisting the damp fabric until the creases leave red paths on her skin. 

When it’s done, she’s slumped bonelessly against him, sniffling and coughing and feeling utterly wretched. He hasn’t said a word, just kept one hand on her head and the other tucking her against his shoulder. 

He’s so steady when she’s careening out of control. She wonders if it’s because he has something to do, something to be; it’s only when he has nothing to focus on that he starts to fly apart himself. It’s almost unfair. She has plenty to do and plenty of things to be, but all the responsibility is pressing down like water in her lungs, and even though she can breathe, she’s still drowning.

 

****

When the first garden workers start to trickle onto the terraces, Max wordlessly coaxes her down from the crane. Furiosa wipes her eyes and squares her shoulders, and retreats inside herself, smiling and nodding as they’re greeted good morning. She collects her prosthesis while Max ducks into the kitchen to obtain breakfast, and then follows him to the Garage Tower. 

“‘S a meeting today,” he mutters, as they pass a group of milkers and Pups heading to the opposite direction. “Thought maybe we’d make ourselves scarce.”

She nods. The flatbread tastes like ash in her mouth, but he keeps giving her significant glances, so she chews until she has no more saliva, and forces herself to swallow. 

Keno’s the only one in the main shop, examining loops of electrical wire salvaged from a Gastown pursuit bike. He nods at their arrival. “Boss. Max.” 

“Taking the rig out,” Max announces. 

The Repair Boy nods. “It’s ready to test, but I en’t had anyone to spare, not with the meeting today.” He looks to Furiosa. “Boss, you want a full crew? Can’t say they can muster, but I can pass it along to Toast and Ello-”

“Just two,” Max interjects, and shrugs to Furiosa. “Won’t go far. Just up the road and back.”

She should protest - logistically, they’re two of the highest-value targets at the Citadel - but the black, seething part of her, the part that just climbed the crane, wants to gun the engine and burn. Instead, she sits behind the blank facade of her face and tries to remember how Imperator-Furiosa would act. Furiosa-Who-Is-Not-A-Thing is so far a disappointing, wholly dysfunctional mess. “We’ll be fine.”

Keno barely bats an eye. “I believe you. It’s got guzz. Not enough for a full run - we might have to siphon from other vehicles when it comes to that - but at least enough for an hour or two.”

Max huffs in gratitude, and they head to the cab. 

The lift has been down a handful of times since the end of the rain five days ago - mostly to collect the vehicle carcasses left behind by the siege - and the Wretched swarm the platform, parting only when Max revs the engine, the big V8 roar bouncing off the walls of the towers. Furiosa wants to drive - the sound of the exhaust bubbles up in her blood with an almost feral need, tasting of diesel and freedom - but the shifter takes a firm hand, and her ribs aren’t prepared for the strain. 

She misses the War Rig, of having a metal shell perfectly configured around her. She misses having a well-trained crew. She misses being in control. 

Furiosa has never been the one in control. 

They drive. The engine sounds pretty good - a deep, throaty rumble - and the gears are rough, but accurate. When the Citadel is three distant towers, Max cuts hard to the right, taking the rig out into the dunes in a wide circle until they’re looking back at the road. He eases the rig to a stop and cuts the engine. 

“This,” he gestures to the ribbon of cracked asphalt stretched out between them and Gastown. “This is called Fury Road?”

She gives him a strange look. “It doesn’t have a name. Why do you ask?”

“Oh.” He shrugs. “Heard one of the War Boys say it once, that they were gonna die historic on the Fury Road. Figured this was it. No other roads, really.”

Her expression softens. “Fury Road is...it’s the route to Valhalla. It’s not meant to be any actual place. For the War Boys, it’s the fight before they die. They say they’re driving the Road, but they just mean they’re still alive.”

“And you?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Me?”

Max nods. “Do you think you’re, mm, driving this ‘Fury Road’?”

Furiosa has never bought into Joe’s bullshit - at least, not the obvious demagoguery; she’s coming to realize she’d been more indoctrinated than she’d thought - but there’s an appeal to seeing life as a road. “Val and I used to take our mothers’ bikes,” she hears herself say, and the hurt wells up deep and fierce. “We’d ride for hours. We’d get in such trouble...” Her throat closes up on the memory, of Valkyrie standing on the pegs, laughing with her arms outstretched as she careened through the dunes. They’d tried so many stupid stunts, and then naturally crashed and had to learn to repair the damage. It was how girls became Vuvalini: taking risks and learning from the consequences. 

Furiosa has taken risks. What she’s learned from the consequences is that she’s a menace. 

Max is staring at her intently. He nods to himself, as if coming to a grave decision, and opens the cab door, dropping down to the sand. “Right. Come with me.” 

She frowns, but follows. 

He walks out a few paces from the rig. The wind is blowing, and the red sand swallows up his footprints. She realizes he’s holding out a pistol, his fingers around the barrel as he offers it to her. 

“Best do it now,” he says solemnly. “No use waiting.”

Her body understands before her brain does, and it’s like she’s been drenched in icy water. “What?”

He huffs a little, and bounces the gun at her. Automatically, she reaches out, but his free hand catches hers and holds fast. “I’ll, mm. I’ll tell everyone you fell,” he says, his voice like breaking stone. 

“Max-”

“It’s a decision,” he says fiercely, and punctuates each word with a hard shake of her hands, the metal of the gun cold between them. “You - keep - moving. Or...you don’t. Linger in the wasteland, and you’ll go insane.” Something twists in his face, desperate and raw, and he grits his teeth. “You have to choose.”

Comprehension slides into place like the gears of the rig’s hardened transmission, jarring and loud. He’s still fixated on the fact she’d climbed the maintenance crane, and he’s convinced she’s suicidal; he’s trying to make it easier, trying to save her the pain of days deciding whether to live or die. She can feel the tension is his hands, see it crackle along the lines of his shoulders, but he’s offering this because it’s the only way he knows how to help. 

The worst part is that she’s not sure he’s _wrong_. 

“Just...” He licks his lips and twitches, as if she’s live current and it’s taking all his endurance to hold on. “Don’t ask me to do it.”

He mistakes her sudden stillness for conviction, and gives her hand one final squeeze before stepping back. 

The gun is in her hand. She can tell by the weight it has a full clip - a rare thing, in the days since the siege, and he’s given it freely. She stares at it, feeling the heft of it in her hand, comfortable and familiar. Weapons mean power and freedom. She’s honestly never thought to turn one on herself. 

Max is staring at her, face hard and eyes blazing. This could be the last thing she ever sees, the face of a man willing to give her his blood and then watch her spill it all over the sand. He could be her witness, and he’d do it, not out of duty or some kind of cultish devotion, but because he cares enough to watch.

Is this what it means to be loved? She honestly has no idea. And why, of all the people, has he chosen to stand here in front of _her_? When she’d have shot him in the head as soon as looked at him-

Furiosa can’t do that to him. It’s too easy to give up. It’s too easy to fall into her failures and let someone else clean up the pieces, and of all people, Max does not deserve to bear her burdens. The words come out like ash: “This is not redemption.”

He shakes his head convulsively. “No. ‘S not.”

She lets the gun fall from her fingers into the blowing sand, and suddenly she’s shaking in a cold sweat, all the adrenaline dropping out in a rush. 

He’s there immediately, clinging to her with desperate strength, and distantly, she realizes what this would have cost him. His hair’s too short to grasp, so she takes a trembling fistful of his scarf. “I’m sorry,” she croaks, eyes overflowing. “I’m so sorry.”

Max just presses his forehead into her shoulder, breathing like he’s run a great distance, eyes squeezed shut and body shaking. 

He’s having his own breakdown. He truly thought he was going to lose her. 

They are going to be the death of each other, at this rate. 

All at once, she wonders if receiving his blood means they are bound together, if he feels the echo of his heart as it flows through her veins. It’s terrifying, to have him this close, but her arms are tight around him and she can’t bring herself to let go. She doesn’t deserve everything he’s given her, doesn’t deserve his kindness, doesn’t deserve the way he’s holding her like he’s afraid of what will happen if he’s not. She doesn’t know if she can allow herself to be held like this, but if she pulls back, something rare and vital will be ripped away. 

He shouldn’t be trying to save her. It doesn’t make _sense_. 

“I know,” he mumbles, and it’s only then she realizes she’s spoken the last part aloud. “But, mm, maybe that’s redemption.”

She’s tired. She’s so tired. She’s skirting the hot edge of tears, but she doesn’t even have the energy for that. “The fuck do we _do_ ,” she says hoarsely, because she can’t even fathom how to proceed.

His answer is immediate. “We keep moving.”

And it’s obvious. It’s so obvious. It’s obvious and he says it with such conviction that her vision blurs with relief. “Fool,” she manages. 

“Max,” he reminds her, and gently tilts her head down to kiss her forehead. 

Once, he’d gripped her belt and held her up as she’d swayed on the hood of the Gigahorse. Now, he’s gripping her head in his hands, and it feels exactly the same. This wasteland fool and his little kindnesses leave her feeling utterly shredded, except that right now, he’s the only thing holding her together. 

****

Back in the rig, he pumps the clutch a little and nods as the engine sputters to life. He turns his head, rolling the words around in his mouth before he speaks. “It’s...not easy. Can’t say if it’ll get better.”

She resists the urge to fold herself up in a ball, arms and legs tucked to her chest. “I figured that.”

“For either of us,” he adds, and gestures to his own head. “I got...mm. You know.”

She nods. “So...we just try and keep each other from going completely crazy?”

Max huffs, lips twitching in what might be a smile. He leans hard on the gearshift and pushes it into first. “From what I hear...there’s this long road.” He shrugs, nervous fingers twiddling on the wheel. “Could drive together awhile. If, mm. If you wanted.”

There’s a raw mess in her chest that hurts even worse than her ribs, but Furiosa breathes against it. “I thought you make your own way.”

He flinches a little, and grunts. 

“It’s going to be a hard run,” she cautions. 

With a gentle lurch, he guides the rig back onto the asphalt, and points it back toward the Citadel, one eyebrow raised. “Never said it wasn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what this looks like. I'm just throwing it up here unedited and huge because as I'm writing Furiosa like this, I'm drawing from places I really don't like to linger and I'm going a little nuts. I've seriously been having stress dreams about this fic. 
> 
> (I promise I'm okay though. I know my core. I'm just doing some heavy lifting here and trying to muscle through to somewhere where the tone is more chill.)


	59. Chapter 59

Max flexes his fingers around the steering wheel and takes a deep breath. The Citadel is looming ahead, the formerly-green buttes smeared dark with fire damage. It goes against all sense and reason to be driving back to this place, but - they have no guzzoline. The needle is hovering above empty, and he’s pretty sure one of the spark plugs is coming loose; the roar of the engine has developed a distinct pattern, and he’s lost some speed. Part of him is screaming that he needs to run, to cut loose of all of this, to shake this place and everyone in it out of his clothes like sand, but it’s too late for that. This vehicle won’t make it beyond the curve of the horizon, and he’s afraid of what will happen to Furiosa if he leaves. 

He’s afraid of what will happen to Furiosa if he takes her with him. 

The roots are taking hold of his bones, tendrils wrapping around and holding him down. It’s a struggle to remember how to breathe. 

Furiosa is curled up in the passenger seat, her rifle slung across her lap. She looks weary, exactly like she has for so many days, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused as she stares out the window. She’s trying to keep watch, but she’s fading, even though it’s barely noon; he sees her head twitch up periodically, and then slowly sink back down toward her chest. He checks his mirrors, alert for any movement; their luck, so far, has held. 

Max has had more than few moments of great fear in his life, moments of panic so deep even thinking about them is like being swallowed up in quicksand. 

He’s starting to worry about the number of times they have involved Furiosa. 

It had been a hellish night. He understood the nightmares - he’s intimately acquainted with the ugly morass that bubbles up from the human subconscious - but he hadn’t expected to feel so helpless. This is Furiosa, the woman whose bullet can knock a rider off his bike in midair, who’d been terrifying in hand-to-hand combat, and who would have easily killed him without regret if the War Boy hadn’t been fighting alongside him. 

Something had happened yesterday, and he doesn’t quite understand how, or what. He’d gone looking for Furiosa, expecting to find her in the Vault, but had instead stumbled into a heated argument between Dag, Cheedo and Capable:

“-have to go after her, did you see her _face_?”

“- _not_ letting her hurt Toast, not like Angharad-”

“She didn’t hurt Angharad, Angharad did it herself!”

“She was _there_. She was _yelling_ -”

“You’re all yelling,” said Toast, swaying in the doorway. “What the fuck?”

Max had blinked, alarmed and overwhelmed. The girls - he feels a fierce protectiveness toward them, but they’re so _loud_ and they’re all talking at once-

“He doesn’t know,” Dag said, crossing her arms. “He didn’t know her before.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cheedo insisted. “She said it was fine!”

“Joe assigned Furiosa to guard us,” Toast said to Max. “Angharad tried to kill her baby, and Furiosa stopped her.” She squared her jaw, one eyebrow daring him to challenge her. “I killed mine today. They’re afraid she’ll go nuts like she did before.”

Max had grunted, and peered at her. “You’re, mm. You’re all right?”

She spit on the ground. “Fuck Joe. I’m better than fine.”

“Furiosa’s not fine,” Capable interjected. She gave Dag the stinkeye. “I don’t know what _you_ said to her-”

The other Wife flared. “I said she wasn’t to hurt Toast-”

“I’m not hurt,” Toast snapped. “I’m also not Angharad, and Joe’s dead now, in case you’d forgotten.”

Capable had put a hand on Max’s sleeve, and he’d almost jumped out of his skin. “She said she was heading back to her room, but she really didn’t want any of us following. Will you at least make sure she’s all right?”

It was a relief to have a clear direction, so he’d nodded, given Toast a final, searching look that she’d rolled her eyes at, and left the girls to their fight. 

It took her forever to come to the door, even though he knew she was there, and he made himself stay and wait, drumming his fingers on his thighs and biting back the anxious howl in his brain. 

Max knows what despair looks like, and when she’d drawn back the bolt, Furiosa had worn it like slave chains, shackled ankles to neck and utterly blindsided by the weight. How many years has he spent in the same state? He can’t even begin to count, and the emptiness in her eyes was terrifying, so he’d fallen all over himself trying to ease her pain. 

He knows that she was an Imperator, and he’s very aware of the spilled blood that title signifies. He knows she grew up in the Green Place, and was stolen as a child. He knows nothing of the path between the two, but bearing witness to her nightmares had felt like watching a shadow play. 

He understands the language of ghosts, and hers had all seemed hell-bent on vengeance. It tells him more than he’d ever wanted to know. 

When the sun is just starting to rise, he’d felt her slip out of bed, and rolled over, his arm awash in pins and needles. He’d been so tired he’d dropped off almost completely when the old Vuvalini just about scared the piss out of him by hissing in his ear, “Well, don’t just _lie there_ , boy, follow her!”

It was the first time she’s spoken since he climbed the Citadel wall, and when he’d staggered to his feet, Glory was by the door, waving her hands and all but tugging him along. 

That was when he’d known something was very, very wrong. 

He’d stumbled into the hallway, hopping as he tugged on his boots. Furiosa had been nowhere to be seen, but Glory was bouncing anxiously at a corner, and Max - giving up on tying his laces and shoving them under the tongue of his boots - had taken off down the corridor. 

_Save us, Max!_

_Why can’t you save us?_

Panic clotted hard in his throat, and every step had been an infinitely frustrating delay. Glory took him up to the terraces and kept going, the burnt stalks of the ruined crops whipping his legs as he’d run. 

He wasn’t sure where she could have gone, or if he’d even get to her before she’d - 

But she’d been curled up in the operator’s nest of one of the maintenance cranes, a blanket pulled over her head and the salt of dried tears crusting around her eyes. He’d glanced around for a gun or a knife, but there was nothing, just the blanket, and when he’d pulled her against his chest, he’d felt the weight of her chains as keenly as he felt his own.

So he’d done something phenomenally stupid. He’d taken her out in the rig-in-progress, every single one of his ghosts crowded between them and screaming in rage and sorrow. He’d gritted his teeth and wrestled the sticky shifter into place, and kept his foot on gas. 

It’s a kindness, he’d told himself, over the incandescent howl of his brain. He’s spent years wandering the waste, a creature more than a man, haunted by the dead and pursued by the living. She’s the first person he’s met who’d understood all that, and she’d understood without a single word of explanation. He doesn’t know what her ghosts say to her, but he knows what it feels like to spend years lost in the netherworld in his skull. 

If she wants a way out, he owes it to her to make sure the exit is clean. He’d put the rig between her and the Citadel - just in case someone was watching through the telescope - and handed her his last full clip. 

Somehow, they’re both still alive, and Max is shaking and drunk with relief. He hadn’t realized how scared he’d been until the gun was on the ground and she was in his arms, warm and whole.

In the passenger seat, Furiosa stirs. “I should climb up and check on the-”

“No.” He does _not_ want her out of his sight. She gives him a sharp look, and he huffs, amending, “Just a drive. Not a full test.”

She nods, a grudging agreement. He’s pretty sure her ribs won’t support her weight, but she’s desperate to do something, to bleed off the listlessness. “Spark plug’s going,” he offers, and pats the shifter. “Plus there’s this.”

“Yeah.”

“Lots of work to be done,” he says, and raises an eyebrow at Furiosa. 

She’s leaning her head back, watching him as he drives. On a whim, he reaches over, and she meets him halfway.

They hold hands until he has to downshift for the Citadel approach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told myself I was going to take a break from writing this weekend, just because the last few chapters have been so intense, but...that's not how I work, apparently. So - onward!
> 
> And speaking of onward, if you're at all interested in influencing the future of this fic, hop over to tumblr and take my [poll](http://sacrificethemtothesquid.tumblr.com/post/126782863328/okay-so-length-and-breadth-is-really-the-first), because I need your opinion. (Even if you don't have a tumblr, you can still vote. Please and thanks!!)


	60. Chapter 60

The Citadel is slowly changing. Workers have changed jobs. Efficiencies are being created. The milk mothers, freed from Joe’s tyranny, have chosen to pump only when they need to, and are delighting in finding places among their peers. Plenty has become an administration powerhouse, while Glita, Almond and Agate have taken over caring for the Pups, stepping into the void left by the sudden dearth of War Boys. Thimble, true to her name, has organized a sewing circle that’s twice as productive as the one Joe had established, and is offering lessons to anyone who wants. Pups, strangely, are her most ardent students, and there’s a handful who have devoted themselves to constructing looms and spinning jennies, scavenging scrap metal and gears. 

It’s been twenty days since the end of the siege and sixteen days since the end of the rain, an event that is still being spoken of with reverence. Everyone who can - Pups, workers, milk mothers, the few Wretched who have been lifted up - has been helping clear the burnt wreckage from the fields, till the soil and plant new seeds. The first few tentative sprouts have broken through, and it’s not so much a council meeting as a celebration. Joyless faces are now smiling. 

It feels very much like hope. 

There is still so much work to be done. The only major system that wasn’t damaged during the siege was the pumps, and Keno’s team has taken the lead on repair, coordinating groups of blackthumbs from all over the Citadel. 

“Max and the boss took this new rig out this morning,” Keno reports. “Lost a spark plug, and the transmission still needs work, but Max said otherwise it ran good.”

Capable tries to hide a smile. All the Repair Boys are utterly enthralled by Max - the latter’s stubborn reticence only adding to his mythos - and the way Keno says his name makes it sound like a title, easily equal to “Boss”.

“How soon until we have a tanker?” asks Toast. She’s still pale and a little woozy, but despite Cheedo and Capable’s protests, she’s still here at the table, working a sliver of wood between her lips. 

“Another three days, maybe four,” Keno says. “It’ll hold maybe six thousand gallons.” He looks apologetic. “Don’t have enough decent scrap for anything larger, plus the rig’s only got the single V8.”

Capable shakes her head. “As long as we can haul a tradable amount of water.” She glances over at Toast. “Do you remember what Furiosa said about Gastown’s cisterns? Was it three weeks or four?”

“She said four.” Toast leans back in her chair. “But we had a _lot_ of rain.”

“Cisterns are only so large.”

“A lot of the Wretched went to Gastown during the siege,” Cheedo points out. 

Gastown’s population has always been larger than Citadel’s. From her research in Joe’s records, Capable’s come to understand the disparity. Gastown has a shallow aquifer of its own, tainted by fracking and poisoned by the refinery, but the bitter water that surrounded the city is large enough to provide for several thousand people. Even at its height, the Citadel has only ever been Joe’s personal fortress, housing no more than five hundred at any given time. Dag and the gardeners have been drawing up plans for more efficient irrigation and hydroponics systems, and they’re confident that within a few growing seasons, the Citadel could support perhaps three times as many inhabitants. 

The future is a bright thing, but the present...that’s a little more difficult. 

She looks over at Jilly. “How are we for food?”

The kitchen head shrugs. “Holding steady. Taking on those few Wretched hasn’t hurt us none, not with all the work they’re doing. Got enough to see us through another 150 days, maybe more.”

Nakmin nods. “Crops’ll be up by then. We’re in good shape.”

Dag allows herself a small, satisfied smile. There’s dirt under her fingernails, and her nose and cheeks are freckled and peeling from the sun. 

They run through a few more agenda items, and then Plenty leans forward. “There’s one thing not on the agenda,” she says, “but the other women and I wanted to bring it up.”

“Of course,” says Capable. “What’s on your mind?”

“A memorial,” says the milk mother. “We lost a lot of people in the siege, and things are better, but there’s still been no closure. Joe didn’t hold with such things, but he’s gone for a reason, and we think it’s needed.”

“That’s a really good idea,” says Cheedo. “A large gathering, maybe? We could have it in the main garage.”

Jilly’s sad smile creases her cheeks, her scars deepening. “When I was a girl, my people would have a party when one of our own died,” she says. “The grownups would drink and laugh and remember, and it would be such a celebration.” She nods to herself. “Haven’t had anything worth celebrating in a good long while.”

Keno looks deeply uncomfortable, but at Capable’s questioning glance he just shakes his head. 

“What is it?” prompts Plenty. “How do War Boys remember their fallen?”

“They’re Witnessed on the road,” Ello says, and folds his arms. “If you don’t die historic, you die soft.”

“This isn’t important!” Keno snaps. He stabs a finger at Capable’s ledger. “What’s next on your list? Come on, let’s go. I’ve got work to do.”

There’s raw hurt in his voice, but now’s not the place for her to try and address it, not when Ello is rolling his eyes and the others are exchanging concerned glances. “Okay,” says Capable carefully. “Now we’re on to a possible pipe system for the Wretched...”

****

Furiosa and Max get to work on the rig. She can’t call it the War Rig, not yet, not when it’s still sputtering on seven pistons and is barely half the size of the behemoth sacrificed to the mountains in their escape. 

Even _that_ feels raw and shuddery, and she has to hug herself to keep from falling apart. She’s wearing Max’s jacket again, even though it’s far too humid and warm in the garage, and the weight of the leather helps ground her a bit. 

Max is on his back on a crawler, doing something to the undercarriage. He slides out, a wry twist to his mouth. “There’s room back here,” he says, gesturing to one of the wheel wells, “if you, mm, want to hide a gun in a skull.”

He’s making a joke. It takes her a moment, and then she has to stare at him, sprawled on the crawler, as relaxed as she’s ever seen him. It’s obvious that he loves mechanics, loves to take bare metal and make it run. He’s as fastidious and respectful of his tools as a Repair Boy, but with the practical know-how and frugal aesthetic of a wasteland feral. 

He’s given her blood and offered her his own kind of mercy. She’s still processing that. It’s more than anyone has ever given her, and he’d given it freely -

She’s still staring, and he frowns. “Hey,” he says gently. “You okay?”

She is broken and ugly and all the blood she’s spilled could fill the tankers of a thousand War Rigs. She’s done things no human should ever do, and she did them knowing they were wrong, knowing they were barbaric and evil. She doesn’t deserve redemption, not for what she’s done. 

But he’s offering it to her anyway. He’s fought against her and alongside her, so he knows exactly what she can do. He’s no stranger to violence, either - she’d known that even before he’d materialized from the fog, covered in the Bullet Farmer’s blood and dragging behind him a wealth of salvage - but...he didn’t kill her when he’d had the chance. She’d have killed him without hesitation. 

How many times has she killed when it wasn’t truly necessary, before Angharad was there to grab her wrist and stay her hand? How many potential allies has she-

That’s a road she can’t follow. 

Max is still looking at her, one eyebrow crooked expectantly. There’s grease smeared on his face and shirt, his elbows and knees filthy with dust, and his hair looks ridiculous, cut too short and as uneven as Toast’s had been the night they finally ran. His goodness is rarer and more precious than water, and he’s offering it to her, repeatedly, without expectations, even though she doesn’t believe in goodness and doesn’t deserve any anyway. 

“Plenty of skulls,” she makes herself say. “But we’re a little short on ammo.”

He huffs, lips quirking, and and slides the crawler back under the rig.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone who responded to the survey! I was expecting, you know, like ten respondents, and so far OVER A HUNDRED PEOPLE HAVE RESPONDED. I can't even. I'm absolutely floored and thrilled and beyond speechless (well, almost) that there are so many people who a) are reading and b) willing to take time and help me out. 
> 
> The results are overwhelmingly in favor of option 2 (explicit content stays within the main work) but enough people seemed uncomfortable with the idea that I also want to acknowledge their point of view. It's given me a lot to think about, and I think aiming somewhere in the middle - aiming for classy? tasteful? - is going to be the best. A challenge! I like it. 
> 
> Also, so you don't wear out your refresh key: starting next week, Husbandthing and I are going to be visiting his family on the Other Coast for seven days, and I haven't decided if I'll be taking my laptop or not. I'll try and get another couple of chapters up this week, but I can't promise anything until after the first of September.
> 
> You're all amazing, and asdfkljg I just want to make you cookies.


	61. Chapter 61

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, this went somewhere else. OH MY GOD THESE KIDS ARE SO HAAAARD TO WRANGLE. 
> 
> I get warm fuzzies from all your comments. You're the best!!

The meetings must be over, because gradually the garage fills back up, the idle chatter of mechanics warming the space. Furiosa feels too raw to be around other people, and Max somehow knows, because he catches her eye and nods, and they slip out. 

“Should probably eat,” he says, and ambles toward the kitchens, ignoring her inaudible protest. 

What she is, is tired. Everything is so heavy, her skin aching under the strain of holding out the air, her ribs a sharp pain at every residual cough. She thinks she’s maybe even tired enough to actually _sleep_. 

Furiosa drops onto a bench at one of the communal tables, and Max quickly returns with two plates of flatbread and vegetable mash. He eats like he’s starving, and she makes an effort - she really does - but the food is thick and flavorless in her mouth. 

She’s still picking at her plate when Mari comes crutching up. “May I join?”

Max hums agreement, and the old Vuvalini smiles at him, easing herself onto the bench next to Furiosa. 

“The meeting,” Max says. “‘S okay?”

Mari nods. “Our girls are figuring it out.” She raises an eyebrow at Furiosa. “You should have been there.”

Furiosa wants nothing to do with the council. She’d been too sick to attend the first meeting, and although she’s consulted with Toast and the others, she just...can’t. The Citadel has been her prison as much as it’s been her home, and while she’ll defend it, she’s a weapon, not a politician, and talking isn’t something she feels much like doing these days. 

Max is staring at his empty plate. “Gonna get more,” he says decisively. “Want some?”

Furiosa shakes her head. 

“Bless that man,” Mari chuckles, as soon as he’s gone. She leans an elbow on the table and assesses Furiosa with sympathetic eyes. “And you, my poor pet. How much of the world are you trying to carry on those shoulders of yours?”

Furiosa pushes the vegetables around on her plate with a piece of sodden flatbread. Max has deliberately abandoned her, and she shouldn’t be annoyed, but she is. She can feel the heat of tears behind her eyes, and she doesn’t want to talk, she just want to-

“It’s fine,” she makes herself say. “I’m all right.”

“If you’re all right,” says Mari quietly, “then why is your man watching you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he leaves to even take a piss?”

“He’s not mine,” Furiosa says automatically, but he _is_ watching her, out of the corner of his eye and over his shoulder as he wheedles a second serving from Nita’s big pot. It’s casually done, and it wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone but Mari, who’s always seen more than Furiosa has wanted her to. 

Her throat is suddenly tight. She wants to say she’s all right, but she’s not, and she wants to say she’s trying to work through it, but she can’t, and she wants to say she’s _sorry_ , but the words are stuck between her lungs like phlegm.

The old Vuvalini tsks, and Furiosa leans her head on Mari’s shoulder, wizened fingers coming up to ruffle through Furiosa’s hair. Mari smells like herbal oils and something else, something green and good and safe.

The scent tickles bits of memory, of a Furiosa who wasn’t a weapon. A Furiosa who had a family, had a mother-

She’s choking now, strangled by her pain. Her vision has gone thick and blurry. 

“Out of the womb, everything hurts,” Mari murmurs, but it’s meant to soothe, like her fingers making slow circles on Furiosa’s scalp. “But you’re not alone, pet. There are so many people around you.”

That’s not how she’s used to operating. She’s been an Imperator for three thousand days, and she’d had to stand apart from her crew to be an effective leader. Before that, she’d been scared and angry, and her gender and her history set her apart from her fellow War Boys. When she’d been a Wife…well. She’d never trusted anyone to watch her back before, and even now, even when Max has proven he’s reliable - proven it over and over, despite his own challenges, despite his own history - she’s still reticent to trust. 

She trusts Max in battle. She doesn’t know how to trust _anyone_ anywhere else. 

Max returns with what looks like _two_ extra helpings of food - so much for rations - and tucks in, eyeing the way Furiosa is leaning against Mari. 

“We owe you,” Mari says, “for keeping an eye on our girl here.”

He grunts, his eyes flicking from Furiosa to Mari and back.

In her initiation, Katie had made their lineage perfectly clear: being a Vuvalini isn’t like having a garment to don or cast off on a whim. You can be other things while still being Vuvalini. You can have other allegiances. Identity is a patchwork, a quilt, and the strongest, warmest ones have the most squares. 

Furiosa’s quilt is threadbare at best and soaked with blood, and having Mari call her “our girl” makes her want to scream. 

“Come find me if you need,” Mari is saying to Max, gravely. “If things get really bad, don’t let her be alone. Do you understand?”

“I’m right here,” Furiosa grits out, but Max is already nodding. 

Traitor. She narrows her eyes at him, and he pretends not to notice. 

“We’re fine,” he says agreeably. He raises an eyebrow at her, taking a long sip of his water. “Right?”

Furiosa forces her head off Mari’s shoulder. There’s a headache blooming up from the back of her neck, and she just wants to sleep. She should be solicitous, she should at least acknowledge that Mari is reaching out, but she just doesn’t have the energy. 

She had tried to run to the Green Place, but now the Green Place is _here_ , and she can’t engage with the people she’d so desperately wanted to find. 

No. That’s wrong. She didn’t want to find them. _Angharad_ had wanted to find them. Furiosa had wanted to hurt Joe, and since taking Angharad and the others to the Green Place would hurt him the most, that’s what she’d chosen. If there had been anything more painful - blowing up the water pumps or destroying part of the Citadel, anything more personal and damaging than stealing his Wives - she’d have done that and let the women rot. She wonders if Angharad ever guessed, Angharad who had died for Furiosa’s revenge. She wonders if any of them have ever guessed. 

She’s taken too long to answer, locked in the murky darkness in her head, and Mari and Max share a knowing look. Mari pats her shoulder affectionately - Furiosa is too exhausted to flinch - and pushes herself to her feet.

“Come find me,” Mari repeats. “Me or Amy or one of the girls.” She squeezes Furiosa’s shoulder. “It doesn’t mean anything bad, and it’s nothing shameful. Sometimes a wound’s so deep, it’s got to fester before it comes clean.”

Mari knows nothing of Furiosa’s shame, and nothing of her wounds, and she hates the way they’re looking at her as if she’s something deserving of sympathy, when if they knew, if they really knew-

Her throat is closing up again, her pulse suddenly too loud and too fast in her ears, and she thinks for one wild second that’s she’s going to vomit. Her body is screaming at her to run, but she’s frozen in place, her spine severed at the neck and sending signals to empty air. She needs to unbuckle her prosthesis, but she can’t move. 

Joe knew what she was, and he didn’t kill her because he approved of her skills, approved of her methods. She’s faster and more efficient and twice as ruthless as anyone else. The bodies of everyone she’s killed are stacked around her in heaps as tall as the Citadel buttes, and Mari is still smiling at her, Mari, the woman who helped raise her, who wiped her ass and taught her to sew a suture.

She is nothing like Mari, and everything like Joe. They should have thrown her off the Gigahorse after him, let the Wretched tear into her corpse-

Someone is gasping, the awful noise of sharp rocks against metal, and it’s not until Max is squatting in front of her that she realizes she’s not getting any air.

“Hey,” he’s saying, eyes flicking across her face, “hey.” He smoothes the hair off her forehead and tucks her human hand against his chest. “Breathe. Feel that? Nice and slow.”

He doesn’t say everything is alright, because it’s _not_ , and she is so painfully grateful that she just presses her head against his shoulder and hyperventilates into his shirt. His heartbeat is slow and steady beneath her hand, a drumbeat that she can cling to. He’s loosening the buckles on her prosthesis, and her ribs knife hard against the freedom.

“Would a sleeping draught help?” Mari murmurs somewhere overhead. 

She feels Max shake his head vehemently. “No drugs.”

She’s grateful for that, too. He’s a warrior; he understands how terrifying it is to find one’s reaction time dulled by soporifics. 

Mari is still talking to Max, quietly, as Furiosa flares out between them. “This happened last night, in the Vault. Regarding Toast.” It’s not a question.

He hums, a non-answer that vibrates through his chest.

“And you,” Mari says, as if she’s trying to suggest calm to a wild animal, “you...understand.” She hadn’t witnessed the incident in the pool, but she’d of course heard about it. 

He hums again, a clear affirmative. “Got to, mm. Ride it through,” he mutters into Furiosa’s hair. His fingers are hard on the back of her neck, carefully placed so as not to touch her brand. “Gets worse if there’s nothing to keep your mind occupied.”

Furiosa’s body is slowly starting to come unclenched, sensation trickling into paralyzed limbs. 

“Do you need anything?” asks Mari quietly.

“Space,” Max says immediately. “And, mm.” She feels him turn, surveying the room. “Best keep it quiet, yeah?” It’s after lunch, and there’s only the kitchen workers, far enough away to be oblivious.

No one needs to know that Joe’s former Imperator is a sniveling mess. 

But he’s still speaking. “It’s...mm.” His fingers stroke gentle rows on the back of her skull. “When it’s calm,” he says, and moves a hand to gesture vaguely, “when there’s no fight, mm? The brain, mm. Makes a fight. Like quicksand. Move over it, you don’t sink. Stop, and you get sucked right down.”

Is that what this is? Has she been fighting for so long she’s never truly had a moment where she’s felt safe?

She still doesn’t feel safe, except when Max is right next to her. Are they healing, or poisoning each other? It makes sense, that she’d poison the one person she thinks she could maybe-

“Don’t.” His breath is warm in her ear. “Please.”

Either he can feel her tense up, or he can read minds. 

She doesn’t know how, but the next thing she knows, she’s standing in the middle of her room, arms dangling empty and numb as he bolts the door. Gently, he unbuckles her belts the rest of the way, and eases the prosthesis off her stub. 

“Mari?” she says, because it’s a word that bubbles to the surface of her mind. 

Max gives her a startled look, as if the sound of her voice is wholly unexpected. “Stayed.” He puts her arm on its hook and scrubs a hand over his haphazard stubble. “You, mm. Needed to get out.”

Furiosa nods and hugs herself, feeling suddenly naked and exposed. “You shouldn’t,” she blurts out. “You should go. I’m not-” 

Not safe. Not well. Not worthy. 

His gaze shivers a little, like he’s forcing himself to look at her. It hurts, that expression, and she imagines it’s because he sees something rotten and bloated-

“You _are_.” The words explode out of him, and Max huffs like he’s just taken a blow to the sternum. “And...mm.” He grits his teeth and forces out the rest of the sentence. “I want, mm. I. Want. To. Stay. I want to stay.”

His chest is heaving and he’s suddenly covered in a sheen of sweat, as if this declaration is the most physically taxing thing he’s ever done. “That’s what I want.”

Max came back. He gave her blood and held her up, and then when he had to leave, he did, but he still came back and found her in the middle of a firefight, and hasn’t left her side since. 

“Is it because I asked you to stay?” she says quietly. “Because the siege is-”

He shakes his head convulsively. “‘M not good at staying.” His hands clench into fists at his sides. “But...need to _try_.”

If he can try, if he can face down his ghosts and stand his ground, then she can at least try and pull herself together. She takes a deep breath and swallows hard, and makes herself cross the floor to put her face against his neck. His arms come up around her, one hand cradling the back of her head. 

She’s still wearing his jacket, and he’s standing in her room, and they are both of them ugly, unfettered wrecks, careening full-throttle down a road with an unknown destination. If this is hope, it’s excruciating, but if this is hope...it’s all she has. 

“We keep moving,” she mutters against his skin. 

He hums in agreement.


	62. Chapter 62

Furiosa keeps moving. 

It’s a painful slog, punctuated by restless nights and listless days. She and Max share a bed, and the sounds of their nightmares are trapped behind her room’s barred door. No one else has moved into the Imperators’ block, and if anyone hears, they keep it to themselves. 

His ghosts are quiet, but he comes up swinging and desperate to fight. She’s more prone to screaming, rage and sorrow boiling up from black depths, but more than once she’s thrown a punch that knocked him clean out of bed. They’ve gone to breakfast wearing each other’s bruises, and from the appraising glances of the repair crews, it’s obvious that everyone thinks they’re violently, passionately fucking. 

To say that it adds to his near-godlike status is an understatement. 

It’s not that fucking hasn’t occurred to her; they’ve shared a bed and a toilet now for twenty-six days, and there are moments when the maleness of his body becomes inescapable. She understands, on some level, that being fucked by Max would certainly be different than being fucked by Joe, or by any of the War Boys who have propositioned her in the five thousand days since she’d left the Vault. She also thinks that being with Max might even be _good_ in a way, judging by the gentle, careful way he touches her. When he nudges against her in his sleep, she wonders if he _wants_ to fuck her, if the possibility of fucking is one of his motivations to stay. 

If he’s conscious enough to realize his state, he jerks his hips back as if scalded, and then hurriedly tucks himself away. It’s not the sort of reaction she expects from a man who wants sex. (Or, for that matter, a man in general. The whole situation is puzzling, and even though she’d never admit it to herself, she spends more time than she should turning it over in her head, a welcome distraction from the endless howl of despair.)

She pretends she doesn’t notice, and so does he. 

Max’s anxieties seem to wax and wane with no discernable pattern, and he seems best when they’re working on the rig together, the garage relatively deserted. That’s when he seems to relax, languid on a crawler or sprawled under the dash, up to his elbows in a nest of electrical wires. On those days, he’s completely present, his wry humor seeping through like oil. 

He does less well around crowds, or anyone painted in white, and the day Keno and Ello’s crews move the last of the Organic Mechanic’s medical equipment up to the Vault, Max grinds his teeth and would have _walked_ to Gastown if Furiosa hadn’t insisted they take the rig out for one more test run. 

They don’t drive far, because they don’t have the guzzoline; they go just until his breathing starts to slow and the wildness leaves his eyes. They park, and don’t come back until it’s almost too dark to see. 

The rumor mill _loves_ it. 

****

The horizon has been quiet since the rain. Gastown and the Bullet Farm remain innocuous, and through her binoculars, Furiosa tracks rigs running trade between the two strongholds. There’s a clan of Buzzards skirting the edges of their territory, but the spiky vehicles stay in the dunes, and never get close enough to pose a threat. None ever stray toward the Citadel. 

The Citadel, for the moment, appears to be safe. They’re painfully short on guzzoline and strictly rationing what little they have left, but they have water and food, and no one is attacking. 

It makes Furiosa’s skin crawl. There has to be a threat, somewhere she’s just not seeing. The longer the peace drags on, the more she wakes up gasping and drenched in sweat, a phantom War Party looming in her mind. 

Mari and the girls insist that everything is fine, that they’re just in a spate of good luck, and it’s exactly what they’ve needed to get back on their feet. 

Max huffs and nods, and together they walk the terraces and plot defense strategies, keeping an eye on the wasteland below. 

****

Max filches from the kitchens, and seems to be offering her pocket-crumbled flatbread or a bit of jerky every time she turns around. She doesn’t remember the last time she was hungry, but she puts the food in her mouth and chews and swallows, and he is momentarily appeased. 

For the most part, she’s getting stronger. Despite a persistent cough, Furiosa’s ribs are slowly healing, and she can almost manage a full flight of stairs without stars overtaking her vision. Every breath still hurts, and her teeth are getting jumpy from days of being ground against the pain. 

“Try this,” Cheedo says, holding out a cup of water and four white tablets.

“What is it?” Furiosa squints her good eye at the offering. The halos in her damaged eye have started to get worse, and when she looks in the mirror, she can see a faint webbing of white across her pupil.

She has not asked Mari about it. She’s started avoiding making eye contact. She knows what a cataract is, and if she’s going to lose her sight, she doesn’t want to know beforehand.

Cheedo considers the pills. “Found them in the Organic Mechanic’s stash when we moved everything. It’s called ibuprofen. It’s supposed to help with pain.”

Furiosa waves a hand. “Save it.” The horizon is still clear, without a frisson of activity from either the Bullet Farm or Gastown. Pressure is building somewhere, it has to be - they couldn’t just retreat from the siege, they need water - and not knowing makes her want to scream. 

"Just because everything hurts doesn't mean it has to," Cheedo says gently, and Furiosa has to look at her then. Little Cheedo, standing in front of her with her hair tied up in a practical bun, an expectant cock to her hips and a raised eyebrow daring her to disagree. It’s a sharp contrast to the girl who cried in the desert. 

“Thank you,” says Furiosa, and chases the pills with a swallow of water. 

Within an hour, she’s breathing without pain for the first time in forty-five days, and she’s so damn grateful that she hides in her room and cries, lying on her back and just revelling in the slow, easy movement of her chest. The pain comes back by nightfall, but she’s had that tiny taste of freedom. 

It almost feels like hope. 

****

The seed crops start to come up, millet, chia, amaranth and canola forming soft green carpets atop ash-dark soil. The plants that survived the ransacking of the hydroponics systems - potatoes, cabbage, herbs - are leafing out again. Dag’s heirlooms stand above the soil like tiny, forthright children. 

“This is perfect,” Capable says breathlessly, hugging Furiosa’s human arm as they walk the terraces. “Aren’t you excited? We’re making our own Green Place!” 

She _wants_ to be excited, and even feels a small ripple of pride at the work the girls have done, but it’s buried underneath the reality that the fires were her fault, that the Green Place is _gone_ , and there are threats on the horizon she can’t possibly see-

“Furiosa, please, no, I didn’t mean it that way,” Capable’s suddenly clutching at Furiosa’s nerveless fingers as her body goes numb, and pulls her into an embrace Furiosa can’t return. “This is good, this is okay. This is what we want. This is _good_.” 

It’s not the worst attack she’s had, but she’s tried so hard to keep her bad moments hidden. She closes her eyes and imagines Max’s heartbeat against her palm, steady and sure. Capable rests her forehead against Furiosa’s, and with agonizing slowness, her body gradually downshifts. 

“Is it the Green Place? Or the fires?” Capable asks quietly. “Does it help if I don’t mention certain things…?”

“It’s fine,” says Furiosa. The thoughts are in her head whether she hears the words aloud or not. She’s shaky and drained, the world too loud and too bright for her raw senses. 

Capable completely misses the exhaustion, and stands on her toes to put a kiss on Furiosa’s cheek. “You’ll get better,” she says gamely. “You’re strong. I know you will.”

Across the field, ostensibly helping dig a water line, Max watches her. His eyes never stray, and somehow, that's the greatest comfort of all.


	63. Chapter 63

The passage of time has many metrics in the wasteland. The Vuvalini use the old language of weeks and years, a habit that persists even when the desert seasons are almost indistinguishable.

Cheedo measures in healing, in the crusting of scabs and the slow knit of bone. 

Dag measures in height, tiny seedlings stretching up and unfolding tender leaves. 

Capable measures in pages; her ledger is growing, each day bringing new conflicts to be resolved and triumphs to be celebrated.

Toast measures in strength and accuracy, in the growing camaraderie and skill of the War Boys she trains with. 

Furiosa measures in survival. Every sunrise is another small victory. 

Max measures time by the slow growth of his hair. 

It’s been fifty days since the return to the Citadel. 

****

Keno finds Capable in the Vault, her hair piled in a messy tower and a basket of fabric strips in her lap, waiting to be rolled into bandages. By almost universal agreement, the Vault has been converted to the medical clinic; it’s cleaner and brighter than the Organic Mechanic’s lair, and Mari insisted that the Vault’s air filtration and humidity will only help their patients. 

When the Organic’s equipment had been brought up, Mari had been reduced to a state of near-hysterical disbelief. “This could have been a fully functional lab,” she’d moaned, opening yet another dusty, unused case of bottles. “Military-grade field equipment - and these reagents, they’re still _sealed!_ ”

“Use to make regular runs to Bartertown,” Ace had offered. “Previous Mechanic liked old tech best. When he died, new Mechanic couldn’t be bothered.” 

Mari had looked ready to murder. 

Now, Capable sits at the common table, watching Cheedo and Mari’s latest initiates - a small group of milk mothers and older Pups - bustle around organizing. She grins at Keno’s expression. “Quite a change, isn’t it?”

He’s still clearly discomfited by being in the Vault, but it’s been scrubbed and rearranged into a more effective clinic - lab equipment and storage upstairs, beds for patients downstairs. Partitions have been erected for privacy, and part of the area under the dome has been converted into an operating theater. The hanging plants have been moved where contamination might be an issue, but otherwise, they trail over surfaces and provide a calming green touch to a room that might otherwise be terrifyingly sterile. “Can’t believe the Mechanic had all that tech. You think the healer can actually use it?” 

“Get me enough power, I can sew your head back on if it gets detached,” Mari calls out from somewhere up above.

Cheedo rolls her eyes as she passes by with an armload of equipment. “She means yes.”

“Oh.” Keno swallows. “Um. Good?”

“This is good,” Capable assures him. “It might change what it means to be half-life.”

That doesn’t seem to comfort. 

“Tanker is done,” Keno says, changing the subject. “Maz’s crew did a water test this morning, and didn’t find any leaks.” He raises an eyebrow. “Rig needs another run, but we don’t have the guzz. As it is, we’ll be riding fumes to Gastown.”

Capable nods. “Toast and Ello say they’re ready to ride. Have you talked with Furiosa and Max?”

He shakes his head. “Boss said she’d find you. Said she was heading up to the teeth.”

She finishes rolling a bandage and puts the basket on the table. “I’ll see if I can catch her.” He’s turning to go, but stops when she touches his shoulder. He’s been on the terraces working on the windmills again, and his paint is extra thick, white dust clinging to her fingers. “Are you coming tonight?”

Capable can see how his body tenses, the lines of his back becoming hard and wary. “Some of the guys want to, yeah.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want.” She lets her hand linger on his skin and he seems to relax, just a bit.

He shrugs. “Haven’t decided.” 

The idea of a memorial service for the Citadel’s fallen has almost universal acceptance, except among Immortan Joe’s former adherents. Keno’s come around to understand why Furiosa had done what she had - Capable’s even heard him snap, “Fuk-ushima, Maz, you aren’t a thing, use your head!” which makes her smile - but for some reason, he’s still deeply uncomfortable with the idea of honoring the dead, and so far, unable to articulate why. 

Furiosa isn’t in the teeth; she’s up in the milking chamber with the spyglass, peering out at Gastown as it shivers in the noonday heat. “Any signals?” she’s asking the Pup, Spark, who’s most recently been the lookout. 

The boy shakes his head. “No mirrors, no flares. Nothing.”

She looks over at Max, who’s loitering nearby. “Their cisterns hold enough water for twenty-eight days. That’s today. They’re out of water _today_.”

“Could be rationing,” says Max, but he sounds doubtful. He raises an eyebrow at Capable. “Not really the types to ration.”

“The regular people aren’t getting the clean water, either,” Capable adds. She remembers her first taste of Citadel water, how it didn’t burn in her mouth or leave an oily sheen in the cup. 

“Atrox is there,” Furiosa mutters, adjusting the telescope. 

“Or Bullet Farm,” Max says mildly. He frowns. “How’s their water?”

Capable shakes her head. “From Joe’s ledgers, the Bullet Farm’s got a small aquifer that’s self-sustaining, as long as rations are instituted. We’ve made deliveries, but it’s not nearly as frequently as Gastown’s.”

“Bullet Farmers are kami-krazy,” Furiosa says. “Something about the mines. I’ve never had a War Boy from there. Ace wouldn’t let them on the crew.”

“Lead,” speculates Max. “Makes ‘em angry and dumb.”

Furiosa puts a casual hand on his shoulder, balancing as she reaches up to adjust the telescope’s bracket. He grunts a little, shifting his center of gravity, but is otherwise unperturbed.

They are two people who don’t suffer physical contact, and yet they are rarely more than an armslength away from each other. It’s like watching an engine, Capable thinks, the moving parts so close to collision and yet in perfect synchrony. She knows they’re sharing a bed, but she’s not sure she agrees with Cheedo’s starry-eyed theories of wasteland romance. Cheedo is somehow still an innocent, but Capable was plenty old enough to know about men when she’d been taken into the Vault; from what she’s seen, Max and Furiosa just don’t seem like lovers. 

But then, she knows almost nothing about Furiosa, and even less about Max. How many hours had she and Angharad spent, lying in bed and speculating on Furiosa’s past? “She was a Wife,” Angharad had declared. “She was one of us.”

Capable had frowned. “You don’t know. You can’t tell.”

“It’s obvious.” She’d edged closer. “This place freaks her out. Have you seen how she’s never left her spot by the door? She could guard us just as effectively anywhere else, but she never comes any further in than she has to.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like _us_ ,” Capable pointed out. “And Wives don’t become Imperators.” She’d had her miscarriages at that point, both too early for her milk to begin, and during her last examination, Organic had confirmed what she’d already suspected: 

“Better hope your next stays the course, at least enough to get you in milk,” he’d said, sucking his teeth with a leer. “Or it’ll be off the platform for you.”

“ _She_ did,” Angharad said confidently, breaking through Capable’s woolgathering. “That’s why she’ll help us.”

“Why would she help us when she’s the one who’s brought us here?”

“She had no choice then. She had to survive. But if we all escape together, we’ll succeed.” Angharad had reached over and put Capable’s hand on her own swollen belly. “My baby will not be a warlord.”

Capable looks at Furiosa now, silently conferring with the wasteland feral who shares her bed, and wonders what Angharad would make of all this. Her absence is an ache that never goes away, and when Capable is in the middle of a heated discussion and can’t think of the right words, she closes her eyes and tries to imagine what Angharad would do, how she would react. 

“We should signal Gastown,” Capable says finally. “Offer them water. We need the fuel, but they need the water, and if we make an overture, perhaps it won’t go badly.”

Max raises an eyebrow, but Furiosa just grimaces. “Atrox is still there; if he’s taken power, it’ll go badly.”

“They need us,” says Capable. “I think we should signal them.” 

“Is that what the _council_ thinks?” There’s a strange note of bitterness in Furiosa’s voice.

“They know we need guzzoline. They know Gastown needs water. I’ll talk with them.”

Max stretches his bad leg, the brace squeaking slightly as it bends. “Shouldn’t wait much longer. Desperate people, mm. They don’t negotiate.”

Capable know he’s right. “I’ll go find them now. When’s the best time to send a signal?”

Furiosa smiles humorlessly. “Whenever the other side is watching.”


	64. Chapter 64

Furiosa consents to talk to the Council about Gastown because Capable needs her to, but she’s fighting hard against the bile in her throat. 

With the Vault’s conversion into a clinic, the Council meetings have been moved to Joe’s old quarters, since it’s the next large, easily-defensible space. She hasn’t been in his rooms since the siege; her memory is hazy, but she distantly remembers fear and nausea wrapped tightly in her chest, of not being able to breathe and Dag’s thin arms holding her down. 

“Come with me?” she murmurs to Max, and he gives her a look that says she’s ridiculous for thinking she needs to ask. 

She’s using him as a crutch, and she _hates_ it, but...right now, some part of her is injured, and injuries demand accommodation. She’s not sure what she needs to be doing to heal, but having him around seems to help. He doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it seems like he’s benefitting just as much. 

She’s still not sure what to think about that.

Absently, his shoulder brushes against hers; it may look like an accident, but she feels him lean into the contact until she returns the pressure. “We keep moving,” he mutters. “Remember.” 

This is the first time she’s allowed herself in a leadership position since her breakdown, and she folds her hands behind her back, her human fingers twisting around her prosthetic ones to disguise their trembling. She knows how to do this. She knows the Citadel, she knows Gastown, and more importantly, she knows Atrox. 

Factually, she knows these things, but the dark whispers in her head insist that she’s fallen from grace, that she’s a quivering mess and nothing at all like the Imperator she’d been. She has no business at a War Table, and if she fights, everyone will die because she won’t be strong enough to protect them-

“Breathe,” Max reminds her, as they stand outside the door. “Give them facts. Try, mm. Try not to think too hard.” He fusses with the collar of her shirt, picking off an invisible piece of dirt. He’s as nervous as she is, she realizes, and his gray eyes dart like aimless flies. 

On impulse, she lets her lips brush against his cheek as she leans toward his ear. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

It’s not quite a kiss, but he still turns a truly remarkable shade of crimson, frantically blinking and trying to process. The humor of his expression is still sustaining her, an unexpectedly warm bubble in her chest, when Capable comes to invite them in. 

The room smells faintly of Joe, and for a moment her lungs seize up with remembered trauma, but she forces herself to cough and swallow past the sudden buzzing in her ears. 

Furiosa knows Amy, Plenty, Keno, Ello and the girls, but the others around the table she recognizes only by face. She takes her place, her ribs giving a twinge as she sits. Max retreats into the shadows by the door, still within her field of vision but unobtrusive. He’s watching her, ears still faintly pink and eyes flicking around the room nervously. 

“Furiosa,” says Capable by way of introduction, as if anyone didn’t know. She gestures to the others at the table. “Nakmin is working with Dag on the gardens. Jilly is doing a hero’s work in the kitchens-”

“Flatterer,” mutters the woman with only one eye, but she’s smiling.

“-Tall represents the treadmillers, and Dinks, the quartermaster.”

Furiosa considers the latter. “You’re Goon’s successor?”

The woman nods. “Got his fat head shot off. Ain’t wasting my tears.”

It’s not a loss. She’d never quite figured out how Capto had managed to cozy up to the grumpy quartermaster, but he had, and she and Ace had to fight tooth and nail for every sock, pot of grease and drop of guzzoline needed by her crew. She’s almost sorry she hadn’t shot the bastard herself. 

“You’re looking better,” Plenty says. She flashes Furiosa a gap-toothed grin. “Should have figured even lung fever couldn’t get the best of the legendary Bag of Nails.”

It’s meant as a compliment, but the moniker is still a reminder of everything she’s done, of the grave misdeeds weighing so heavily on her shoulders. She is teetering on the edge of a precipice, the leaden panic poised to flood her limbs, and Furiosa forces a breath out through her nose, trying to visualize the perfect mechanical movements of pistons and chambers. “We keep moving,” she says. Her words sound calm and authoritative, as if she’s still somehow an Imperator made of soot and steel, and not someone desperate to curl up against Max’s chest and hide away. 

She catches his eye, and he gives her an infinitesimal nod. 

When did he become her safety line? She vaguely remembers waking up in the Gigahorse, of him curled around her and draining himself into her arm. His blood was a flush of warmth, his body warding of the chill already seeping into her limbs. Hours before, her metal fingers had snagged the edge of his brace and somehow kept him from going under the wheels, and then, their positions reversed: he held her up - he’s still holding her - and even now, she’s not sure what to do with the bewildered gratitude flooding her chest. 

Joe’s words suddenly echo in her head: _Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence._ Water is the source of life; her Vuvalini mothers had taught her that. It isn’t addiction to need something life-giving. It isn’t weakness to need something that gives you strength-

She suddenly feels lightheaded and flushed in a way that has nothing to do with panic, her lips tingling from the memory of stubble. 

Capable has her ledger on the table, the yellowing, wide pages covered in neat, tiny script. “We talked about the situation with Gastown earlier,” she says, “but today has been twenty-eight days since the rain. According to our estimates, their cisterns are either empty or about to be.”

“Let ‘em shrivel,” mutters Jilly. “Then go in and take the refinery. Simple, easy.”

“Wasteland justice,” Dinks agrees.

Toast is shaking her head. “Do _you_ know how to refine oil? I don’t. If they die, we lose their knowledge. We can’t afford that.”

“Might be worth it,” Jilly counters. “We got what we need: food and water and walls.”

“It’s more than guzzoline,” Furiosa says, forcing herself into the conversation. “It’s the relationship. We supply Gastown and the Bullet Farm with water and supplemental foods they can’t grow on their own. In return, we get arms, bullets, and everything Gastown can produce from oil: kerosene, engine lube, fuel, paraffin.” By disrupting the triangle of trade, she’s destabilized the entire political structure of this section of wasteland. She’s not sure whether to feel terrified by the enormity of what she’s done, or to marvel that such a delicate balance has been so easily overturned. “The Citadel maintains the War Rig. We have the best mechanics and fastest pursuit vehicles. We make the trade runs to Bartertown.”

“Don’t have the War Rig,” Ello points out, his words skirting the edge of accusation. 

“The one we just rebuilt will haul,” Keno retorts, but then adds, “Nowhere near the same capacity, though. Nowhere near the torque or speed.”

“Once we get back on our feet,” Toast breaks in, “we’ll go get the War Rig. No one else has the towing power to move a wreck like that, and there was plenty of other, easier salvage. I bet it’s still there.” 

Cheedo bites her lip. “What about the Rock Riders?” 

“They’ll have siphoned off the guzzoline, for sure, but there’s no way they’d have any use for a vehicle that size, not in those canyons.” Toast looks to Furiosa for confirmation, who nods. “Buzzards are the biggest threat, but their territory ends further west.”

The Knowing, indeed. It occurs to Furiosa that Katie would have _loved_ Toast. 

“Back to Gastown,” Capable interjects. “I think we should signal them. Let them know we’re willing to trade. If we open trade lines back up, we have a chance at building up a better defense system.”

“ _Any_ defense system,” mutters Ello. “Right now, we got nothing.”

“What’s the risk?” asks Amy, crossing her arms. “After the siege, they all went running. If we go to make the delivery, who will be waiting for us?”

“Atrox,” Furiosa says immediately. “It’ll be a fight.” Dinks nods in agreement. 

“How do you know he wasn’t killed?” Jilly demands. “Might have been, and then swept away by the floods.”

“He’s not dead.” She doesn’t know how to explain it, how to distill five thousand days of knowledge into a single succinct phrase. “He’s the last one standing. He always is. Gastown needs water, but they haven’t signalled. They’re waiting for us to offer. He’s trying to draw us out.”

Plenty frowns. “So it’s a trap?”

“All those people,” breathes Cheedo. “They’re dying of thirst because of us?”

“They were dying before,” Capable says bitterly. “The people don’t get the water. That’s for the leadership.”

Jilly narrows her eyes. “She’s right. I came from Gastown. Nothing good gets out of the People Eater’s towers, I promise you that.”

“The People Eater’s dead,” Cheedo says. “What if things have changed there, like they have here?”

The older woman laughs. “It’s one thing to win the hearts of a few boys in white paint. Gastown’s got thousands of people, each one more desperate than the last. Nothing’s changed, girl. Just the faces in charge.”

“And without the People Eater, it might be even more chaotic,” Toast adds. “I’m sure he’s got minions to keep the books, but without his guidance, who knows how accurate they are.”

“It’s a trap,” Furiosa confirms. “And it’ll be a hard fight. We have very little ammunition, and we don’t have enough guzzoline for a return trip.”

The rest of the table goes quiet, her statement sinking in like water through hard-packed sand: slowly, just disappearing without a ripple. 

Toast works a sliver of wood between her teeth. “You’re saying it’s a suicide run.”

“I’m saying it’s a hard run,” Furiosa counters. 

“What happens when you get there?” demands Plenty. “Just...kill Atrox, and hope the others give up? That’s your plan?”

Her plan is to kill Atrox and then kill everyone else. If she dies in the process…

She can feel Max’s eyes burning into her skin from the shadows. 

“No!” Capable bursts out. “We negotiate. We talk with them. We negotiate and-”

“There is no negotiating,” Furiosa says, feeling strangely calm and distant. “Not with Atrox. The Gastown generals, maybe. But not while he’s still alive.”

“What if you can’t kill him?” Amy asks, leaning back in her chair. “If he kills you, instead. Then he’s got the rig and the fuel.”

“I know his weaknesses. I can do it.”

“Furiosa…” Cheedo bites her lip. “You’re not even twenty days out of bed-”

“I’m going with her.” Max is suddenly stepping up to the table, coming around to flank her. “You need a strong driver. Have to, with that gearbox.” He shoots her an apologetic look, and she quirks an eyebrow in understanding. “She’s got the shot. I’ve seen it. Can hit a Rock Rider out of the sky with a flare gun.” He pantomimes the action. The girls all nod in agreement. “Me, her, maybe a couple of War Boys. Light crew. We get in, take out this, mm, Atrox, and come back. Then we regroup.” His elbow brushes her shoulder, the faintest touch, and she knows he has her back. 

Jilly scowls. “What’s in it for you? You’re not Citadel.”

Furiosa feels his twitching discomfort. “Got the scar on my neck same as the others. Would like to see this place, mm. Become something other.”

“He’s reliable,” Amy clarifies. “Fought with us on the run, fought with us during the siege. Saved Furiosa when she would have died.”

“I’ll go,” Ello says decisively. He shrugs. “We’re not the famous Rig crew, but we’re stubborn and we can throw a lance. Seems enough.”

“I don’t like it.” Plenty scratches the dark skin between her elaborate cornrows. “Doesn’t seem smart, going right into a trap.”

“Do we have a choice?” Capable says quietly. “Furiosa’s right. We need the guzzoline. I don’t like it any more than you do, but...if we’re attacked again, we’ll lose. We just don’t have the defenses. We need to find allies, and we can’t do that by hiding in our towers.” She looks like she’s swallowing back anguish, but holding steady. 

“What if you don’t come back? What then?” says Nakmin. 

Max presses against Furiosa’s shoulder, but it’s Capable who answers. “We keep moving,” she says. “We always keep moving.”

Plenty opens her mouth like she’s thought of another argument, but then shakes her head. “Fine. I don’t like it, but I don’t see we have much choice.”

****

The Council is in agreement. The mirrors are lit, and the message is sent: _Water to trade for fuel._

The answer comes back instantly: _Yes. Tomorrow._


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK!!!
> 
> So I'd bought a keyboard for my tablet but between the shitty little keys and shitty Google docs app...writing was dumb. (I bought a paper journal. Like, to write with by hand. It was also shitty.)
> 
> But I'm back and ready to hand out new chapters and shock blankets. I love you all!

The memorial isn’t Capable’s idea, but she’s the one who asks if Furiosa is going, and even though she wants to say no - even though she’s galvanized by the prospect of battle, she still feels shredded by the Council meeting, and all she wants to do is press her face against Max’s neck and breathe - she sees Ace crutching down the hallway, and the words don’t come. 

She owes it to her crew, the ones she sacrificed to make her run, even if they'd died the way they'd wanted to: in a furious column of flame, a death as historic and shine as going by the hand of the Immortan himself. 

They have several hours to kill before sundown, and even though Furiosa is desperately tired, she make herself go down to the garage, where the War Boys are putting the final touches on the new rig.

"Hey, Boss! Heard we're making a run!" Riz enthuses. "Finally taking this rig out, gonna be so shine!"

"Get to show Gastown what we're made of," adds Target. 

"This is a supply run," Furiosa cautions. "We stick together, make the exchange, and get out of there. I don't have room for fools looking to die historic."

"Ace already _talked_ with us about that," Riz grumbles. "We _get_ it. Somebody's got to train the Pups, keep the place defended. No one else around, got to be us."

"Toast said to think like a plant," Target says dubiously. "Put down roots and grow as long and as big as possible, instead of trying to make it to Valhalla before dying soft." He looks suddenly concerned. "Boss, some of the others are saying Valhalla isn't real. Is that true?"

They're all looking at her, her pitiful, makeshift crew of War Boys so green they're barely taller than Pups. Not one of them except Miro has been on a rig before, and even though Ace has done the best he can - she knows he has; even with a bum leg, he's a force as certain and immutable as gravity - the best way to train is through experience, and they just don’t have that. “I can’t tell you what to think,” she says finally. 

“Told you she’d say that,” mutters Riz. 

Target looks like he’s just been instructed to lick the grease off the Gigahorse’s brake pads: a bizarre and completely unappetizing task that is probably an honor but also might be a punishment.

Meanwhile, Max is peering into the engine compartment. “You rebuild these, mm, spark plugs?” he asks the room at large, gesturing. He’s still wearing a length of dirty linen around one hand, and Furiosa wonders if it’s because he’s forgotten to take it off; if her own wounds are well-closed by now, his certainly has healed.

“Rebuilt and reseated,” confirms Riz, wiping his hands off on a rag. “Two more were about to go, so we did all eight. Sounds like a chrome storm, it does.”

Max is already climbing into the driver’s seat. “Need to hear it.” 

As the engine roars to life, Ace crutches into to room, pausing at the doorway. There’s a resentful set to his shoulders; his leg isn’t healing well - sometime after the battle, an infection had set in, and she knows Cheedo and Mari have been throwing every poultice and concoction at him, trying to save the limb. He’s so far refused to talk about it, and that’s fine. She hasn’t been good company for anyone lately herself, and she’s let him take his space. 

Except he’s looking at her now with an expression she knows all too well, one that says he’s got plenty to say but it’s for her ears only. Max is engrossed in engine checks and holding court to two besotted Repair Boys, so she edges over to the doorway. 

“Boss,” Ace says, leaning heavily on his crutches. She doesn’t ask how he is; the bandage at his thigh is leaking green goo, and he smells strongly of healing herbs. He is furiously chafing against his proscribed inaction, and the sour mood surrounds him like a pall. 

She folds her arms and waits for him to speak. 

“Rig’s shit,” he announces. 

Compared to the War Rig, it is. Everything is. “It’s what we’ve got,” she says mildly, because that’s what she _has_ to say, even though she completely agrees with him. 

"Don't like it," Ace mutters. He crutches to the nearest workbench, leaning on the edge to take the weight off his leg. 

"We don't have a choice," Furiosa retorts. "If you want guzzoline, we need to go."

He rolls his gnarled shoulders. "Still don't like it. Not a full crew, not a full tank. Not even enough for a return trip. Shouldn't have let it get this low."

She raises an eyebrow. "I didn't exactly have a choice." But that's a lie - she had a choice, the choice she made the second she turned her wheel to the east and went off-road. She knows it, and he knows it, and she sees it in the flat, cold iron in his eyes. If she’d stayed the course and made the delivery, they wouldn’t be in this position. 

The storm had chosen its moment. She’d just had to meet it head-on. She’d felt the wheels come off the ground and seen her crew lifted into the burning skies, and she’d known at that moment there could be no return. 

He’s still glowering. "Don't like that you're taking the feral."

"I need Max to drive the rig. " Is he...jealous? It's impossible to know, not when his face is as inscrutable as the Citadel's ragged walls. Perhaps he's being protective, or just resentful of the new power structure. "He's reliable."

"Too reliable," Ace snaps. "Your head's not in this. Gonna get them all killed, and you along with 'em."

She'd bluffed her way through the Council meeting, but Ace is looking at her with an angry set to his jaw, and she suddenly feels trapped. Panic rises up hot and bitter in her throat, and for a split second, she wants to punch him, to put her fist through his lumpy fucking face and- 

She forces herself to breathe. "Who's going to go if I don't? You?" She drops her eyes to his leg and back up. "Should we strap you to a lancer's perch and see how it goes?" It's a nasty thing to say, but she's as raw as road rash, her skin flayed back and twitching. 

"Full-lifes en't supposed to go kami-krazy," he shoots back. "I seen War Boys gone cracked, and it's never a benefit to anyone when they freeze up. What happens when you can't take the shot?"

"I'll always take the shot," she snaps. "You don't even know how many times I've held back. Every time that gun's in my hand, I'm ready to take the shot." 

"Then why didn't you?" He's breathing hard, and they're not talking about the run to Gastown anymore. "Why'd you become one of us, if you always meant to go off?”

The argument is not private. Riz and Target are hunched on the far side of the rig, very obviously pretending they don’t hear a thing, and Max is watching her through the windshield, his body tensed and ready to fly to her aid if he needs to. 

“I didn’t always mean to.” The words come out like sand, thick and choking and dry, and she _really_ can’t breathe, not with the weight of seven thousand days of hopelessness pressing in. “Joe _hurt_ me,” she spits, forcing the rush of adrenaline into her pistons, turning panic into useful rage. “If there’d been another way, something that would have hurt him more, I’d have done _that_.” She’d torn off his jaw, but she’d been too hurt to tear him to shreds herself. She suddenly wants the hot slick of his blood between her human fingers, the rubbery chunks of his skin beneath her prosthetic claws. She wants to hear him bubbling his last breath through a shattered windpipe. She wants to see the fear in his eyes, wants to malevolently loom over him like he’d once loomed over her -

A sudden clang jerks her back to awareness. Max is still staring at her; he’s deliberately dropped a spanner, let it clatter off the running board and onto the ground. 

“That,” says Ace. “You can’t do _that_.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Get ‘em all fucking killed, you will.”

“Get back to work,” she snaps, and lets the trembling edge of fury carry her out of the garage.


	66. Chapter 66

The rage is wholly unexpected, and consumes her like a fire. There’s a hysterical edge to it that she doesn’t like, a ragged sense that she’s unravelling like sun-rotted fabric. In the past, when she’s been this angry, she’s taken it out on her body, doing pull-ups and sit-ups with the bars of the window in her room until she’s wrung empty and limp. 

Furiosa locks herself in her room, dropping the deadbolt into place, and gets through a dozen push ups before Max starts banging on the door. She keeps going, ribs and muscles screaming, until it becomes clear that he is hell-bent on ripping the door from its hinges or tunneling through the rock itself. 

It’s cruel, but she lies on the floor a few breaths longer, letting him bloody his hands. 

When she finally opens the door, he practically tumbles through, immediately pushing himself way too close and inspecting every inch of her as if he’d expected disaster. When he finds nothing, he staggers back, scrubbing a hand through the haphazard mess of his hair and glaring. He’s angry, and that in itself is a slap in the face, that he’s come to expect unfettered access to her. 

Furiosa will not apologize. 

“This run,” Max says forcefully.

“I’m a liability,” she interrupts, every syllable a harsh explosion at her lips. “So are you, so’s the rig, so are we all. We keep moving.”

“This is not a suicide run,” he shoots back. “We go, we come back. If we, mm. Run into trouble...we _handle_ it.”

“I _know_ that,” she snaps, and then the rage is too great for words, and she’s shoving him hard against the door with a feral growl. 

They’ve fought before, in the expanse of time between the first time she tackled him to the ground and this moment, but it’s largely been friendly sparring or nightmare-induced scuffles that end as soon as they’re both fully awake. This is none of these. This is a burning, desperate fury that’s uncoordinated and impotent, and Max relaxes into the onslaught, defending himself just enough to avoid serious injury. 

It pisses her off. She’s aching for a fight, and he’s not giving it to her, and the roots of her teeth burn with the indignity of it. 

They overturn the desk, sending mechanical bits and the little can with the dead plant flying, and hit the ground hard. She’s so blind with bloodlust that she leaves herself unguarded for half a heartbeat, and then he’s on her, using his greater mass to pin her to the floor. She screams and rages, but can’t get any leverage. 

The energy dissipates slowly, like an overpressured radiator that hisses itself to equilibrium. 

Somehow, he ends up with one big palm on her forehead, callused fingers pressing a calming circle into her skin. “It’s all right, it’s, mmm. It’s all right.”

His nose is bleeding. She can feel it dripping against her collarbone. 

Max has been nothing but kind to her, he’s been _reliable_ in a way that no man - no _person_ \- has ever been, and she’s responded by trying to beat the shit out of him.

She frowns at him, the collar of his shirt balled hard in her human hand. “Why are you here? What are you hoping for?” Her gaze skitters away, deep unease twisting her stomach. “I’m not-” and then she’s flaring back into hard anger, pushing against him and ready to fight, “the _women_ aren’t-”

But he’s already shaking his head and shifting his hips, in case she’d found something in their position offensive. “No no no no. ‘M not here for...that.” 

She knows he’s not here for a conquest. If he were, he’d have already made the attempt, and he’d be dead. 

“Why are you here?” she says again. Her voice has gone hoarse. 

He twitches a little, and rolls to the side, letting her up. “You keep asking,” he says, pinching his nostrils together and leaning forward. 

“Sticking with me is not the definition of sanity,” she warns. 

“Trying to fix what’s broken,” he counters.

She almost laughs, a sharp, humorless sound. “Hell of a way to do it.” He’s going to get himself killed trying to learn how to stay, and Furiosa would bet water it’ll be her finger on the trigger. 

Max is trying to stop bleeding, and there’s a guilty nausea pooling in her belly. She pushes herself up, body protesting from the abrupt violence, and starts attempting to put the chaos of their fight into order. 

She’s picking up spare prosthetic parts from the overturned desk when she notices the that the plant in the tin - the one she’d thought was long dead - has a tiny sprig of green. Furiosa picks it up, gently tucking dirt back against its roots. She doesn’t understand, she was _sure_ it was gone -

She looks in wonder at Max, who shrugs. “Been watering it,” he mutters. “Thought it might, mm. Help a bit.”

Her throat is suddenly too tight, her heart pounding like an engine at its redline. He’s not looking at her, just concentrating on the nosebleed as if miracles didn’t spring from his fingertips on a regular basis. He stabbed her to make her breathe, he arrived at the siege right when she’d lost all hope, and now, he’s somehow brought her fucking plant back to life.

He’s not trying to learn how to stay. He’s staying to fix _her_. 

She has no idea if it’s even possible, but she already feels like she’s been cracked open and exposed to air, her engine compartment scoured down to raw, trembling metal. She’s thought of him as a road warrior, a kindred spirit in the fight for survival, but she’s gotten it all wrong; he’s a healer, the seed to her anti-seed, and somehow, he’s healing her as well. His blood is in her veins, and she didn’t know she was broken until he was flowing inside her. He kills only when it’s absolutely unavoidable, and when he does, the violence damages him, bruises the tender parts of him like soft leaves crushed underfoot. 

And she’s made him bleed, tried to hurt him like the world has hurt her.

He finally notices her staring, and blinks in confusion. “You, mm. You okay?” There’s blood on his face and hands, a bruise blooming on his cheekbone, and his ridiculous hair sticking out at odd angles. He is at once too innocent and too dangerous, and she feels it sharply in her chest like another displaced rib.

It’s too much. She’s still clutching the little can and its resurrected occupant like a talisman. She wants to tell him how sorry she is, how unworthy of his attention she is, but she’s a weapon in the shape of a person, and she’s not convinced her words won’t inadvertently cut him to pieces. 

Instead, moving with aching caution, she edges over. He goes still, muscles subtly tensed and ready to react, but forcing himself to be calm. 

She presses her lips to the skin at the corner of his mouth. It’s the softest gesture she can think of, a memory dredged up deep and redolent with the smell of damp earth and motorcycle exhaust. 

He doesn’t move for a long moment, and when he does, it’s to tuck her against his shoulder, kissing her forehead with such gentleness that she feels like a stone that’s been split in two. 

 

****

 

Furiosa collects a wet cloth and Max sponges away the worst of the blood. It would be easier to stay curled up around each other, but neither of them have ever taken the easy road. It’s what they’d promised each other out on the salt, and even if the hard run has been a damn sight longer than a day and redemption doesn’t seem anywhere in sight, somehow, they’re still in this together. 

They end up in the main garage at sunset, along with almost everyone else in the Citadel. Some animal part of her is deeply uncomfortable to be in such a large crowd, and one look at Max tells her he feels the same, so they hunker down against the back wall, as close to the door as possible without being too conspicuous. Down between their bodies, where no one else can see, his fingers find hers and cling tightly. 

There’s a disturbance in the middle of the crowd, and as people sit, it becomes clear that Max and Furiosa aren’t the only ones uneasy with the situation. 

“This is stupid,” Keno is complaining. “How is this a thing? We talk about the dead? They’re dead. They don’t know.”

“ _We_ know,” snaps Plenty. “It’s not for the dead. It’s for the living.”

“We’re alive,” he retorts. “What more is there? Why not celebrate every single fucking day, then?”

“Keno-” Capable tries. 

“They’re dead,” he interrupts. “And they’re either - they’re either Witnessed or they en’t, and talking it through won’t change nothing.”

“Maybe we should try it their way,” Maz suggests meekly. 

“This is _stupid_!” Keno throws up his arms. “If you Witness someone, that’s done. Someone dies soft, there’s no Witness, no Valhalla. Why we got to think on that?”

Plenty’s dark eyes flash. “Everyone deserves to be remembered.”

“I don’t want to fucking remember!” 

“What about Jammer-” Capable tries, and Keno stiffens as if he’s been gutshot. 

“ _Don’t_ talk about him-”

Maz frowns. “He was your _mate_ -”

“He _died_ ,” Keno grinds out shakily, “and nobody was there. Nobody _saw_. Somebody should have seen.” He hunches into himself. “Jammer deserved to be Witnessed.”

“You did Witness him,” Capable says quietly.

The Repair Boy looks over at her with miserable, red-rimmed eyes.

“You Witnessed his life,” Capable continues. “You knew him. You saw the best parts of him.” She ghosts her knuckles over his shoulder, but he jerks away. “Isn’t that so much more important than seeing his death?”

Maz frowns. “Is that...is that even possible? I mean, I know Immortan is gone, but...Witnessing a life?”

“Why not?” challenges Ferrous. “We got no hope to mcfeast with the heroes. We’re not War Boys, an’ it’s not for us to die historic. Why _can’t_ we Witness someone’s life?”

There’s a murmur of agreement. “Easier to see,” someone adds. “If they die in the night, an’ they’re alone, they’re still Witnessed.”

“Don’t got to eat chrome.”

“But it’s shiny!”

“Yeah, but it tastes like shit.”

“Don’t need Immortan’s blessing,” someone else grumbles. 

“But…” Maz considers. “I mean, you Witness a death, it’s pretty obvious.” He steeples his fingers like an engine. “I mean, with the chrome and all.”

Ferrous shakes his head. “We can Witness _whenever_. Like if someone does something good, we can all Witness.”

One of the Pups chimes in, “It’s like remembering, but more chrome.”

“Can we Witness ourselves?” another Pup asks, but his fellows quickly shut him up. 

“ _No!_ ”

“Don’t be dumb - of course not.”

“No! That’s just regular remembering.”

“Then _how_?”

Keno suddenly raises a hand for quiet, the muscles in his jaw tight and the lines of his body hard with grief. “Jammer was my friend,” he says, “and I will be his Witness.” 

He looks around at the assembled Repair Boys, the Pups, at the former Wives, at the Vuvalini, at Max and Furiosa, at the various other workers who’ve come to grieve, all silent and watching him. “Jammer earned his grease when I did,” Keno says, “and before that, he was there when I was lifted up from the ground. He could fix anything, but he was especially good with little mechanicals, dials and gauges, right? He never gave up on anything. If it was broke, he could fix it. If he couldn’t fix it - well, that’s because he just hadn’t figured it out yet.”

Furiosa flexes her mechanical arm, her steel fingers bending seamlessly with the barest snick of metal on metal. Her vision blurs.

“Jammer was never really afraid of dying,” Keno continues. “Like, he knew he would - but he was more afraid of having to belay down to the wallside gardens, or worse -” he drops his voice dramatically. “Getting assigned to the _Garden Crew_. Fucking Pup was black to the core; he couldn’t have kept a green thing alive for a hot second. ”

There’s a smattering of appreciative chuckles, and nods of agreement. 

“He was always the first one to lend a hand,” Keno says. “If you had a part you couldn’t find, he’d help you look, or help you make something that fit. When I found my first lump-” his fingers go to his neck, to the pale bulb beneath his ear- “he followed me around and told me stupid jokes - like the absolute worst stupid fucking jokes - until I decided dying couldn’t be worse than having to listen to him go on forever.” His voice goes hoarse. “He was my friend, and I swear to Joe I thought I’d die before he did, but I didn’t, so I’ll be his Witness.” Keno nods, once, wiping his nose on the back of his arm. “So that’s his life. That was Jammer.”

No one speaks. The only sounds are muffled sniffles and throat-cleaning coughs that echo hugely off the damp stone walls. 

Finally, Ace says hoarsely, “Witness.”

“Witness,” Capable agrees.

The word is passed around from mouth to mouth, gaining momentum like tumbling boulder. It’s a rumble like a coming War Party, dense and inescapable, and the room is suddenly too small and too hot. Furiosa pushes herself to her feet and slips into the corridor. 

She makes it outside and slumps against the wall, heart pounding in her ears and her mechanical arm cradled against her body. She doesn’t realize she’s not alone until Max’s hands are on her face, his strange gray eyes peering intently at her. 

“Breathe,” he mutters. “Just. Slow it down.”

She shakes her head, because she _can’t_ , there’s too much of it, too much in her throat and her chest and she feels like she’s drowning-

“You can,” he hums. “You’re okay. Slow it down. Slow it down.”

In the garage, Maz is standing up to talk about another Repair Boy lost in the coup, and Keno sits down heavily, the weight of his grief straining his broad frame. As Furiosa watches, Capable edges over and, after a moment silently asking permission, slides her arms around him. 

“Don’t look at them, mm?” Max says. “Look at me. Right here.”

She can’t look at him, not when he’s looking at her like she’s something fragile and precious, but his hands are on her head, so she just presses her forehead into his shoulder, sucking in desperate, whistling breaths through the fabric of his shirt. 

When she can breathe again, she doesn’t pull away, listening to the steady beat of his heart through his ribcage. “Gastown will give us our trade,” she mutters. “I’ll kill every last one of them if I have to.”

Max grunts in agreement.


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 100k! I am so grateful you've all stuck with me this far. 
> 
> Have a treat, on me. (Tags have been duly adjusted.)

Once everyone has spoken of their dead, the big room falls silent until one of the milk mothers begins to sing. It starts as a quiet lullaby, a melody Max doesn’t recognize but Furiosa somehow does, because he feels her go still against him, her human fingers twitching against his arm in imitation of a half-remembered cadence. 

She is a raging storm, as unpredictable and overwhelming as the haboob she’d ridden to her freedom. It defies logic, but he’s clinging to her because the calmest place of any storm is at its center. 

He’s fought at her side, whirling through smoke and flames, the two of them moving together like engine parts, expertly machined and perfectly oiled. They’re still fighting, but the enemy is less clear. All he knows is that if he leaves, he’ll lose his shelter, lose the precious little sliver of peace that can be found curled around her body. 

He doesn’t count days, but he’s counting these. He’s spent thirty-one nights by her side, and it’s the longest stretch of time he’s felt anything approaching calm since-

Another woman. Another lifetime. Fragments of memory so decayed and distant, he can barely claim ownership-

Furiosa is pressed against him, but his head is whirling like he’s gone off his face on shitty wasteland booze. The two of them teeter together on the edge of sanity like a Polecat, one leaning back and holding on when the other dips too close to the howling sands below. Thirty-one days isn’t the longest he’s spent within the confines of civilization - at least, he’s pretty certain it isn’t, based on hair growth; he knows he was in the mines for longer, knows he was in the bloodbag cages long enough for his brand to heal - but it’s the longest he’s felt anything approaching _safe_. 

And that’s a concept in itself, safe. He hates the chalk-white War Boys, hates the lingering smell of exhaust and human shit in the tunnels, hates the cloying sourness of guzzoline that sticks in the back of his throat. 

(None of these things are bad, by themselves. He loves exhaust, loves the way the scent works its way into a vehicle after years of hard running. It’s the entire combination - the unique olfactory footprint that screams “Citadel” like a klaxon - that makes him nauseous and jumpy, makes his head pound and every muscle howl to be away and gone.)

But then there’s Furiosa, scouring away his anxieties. He has never felt as safe alone in the desert as he does when he’s curled around her: she smells like grease and dust and the faint herbal notes of her soap that hit him like a half-recalled memory, more feeling than image. There are times when he’s woken up from a nightmare to the warmth of her body tucked against his, as solid and steady as the rocks beneath his feet, and at those moments, he has an almost overwhelming urge to taste the sweet brine of her skin. 

He has to slip away then, take himself in hand and do whatever he can to surreptitiously ease the longing ache that’s crept into his bones, so that when he crawls back under the covers beside her, his body isn’t thrumming so loudly with need. 

He knows the blackthumbs think they’re fucking, and he’s almost certain Furiosa knows, too, since she’s so much closer to the crews than he is. He doesn’t know what she thinks about it, and he’ll bite off his own tongue and drown in his own blood before he asks. It’s not that he thinks she’s sexless - he’d seen how the dark-haired Vuvalini led her into the dunes that night, the casual familiarity with which she’d been touched - but beyond his ignorance of her preferences, he is painfully aware of the crimes committed against human bodies in the Citadel. Furiosa’s past experiences, sexual and otherwise, are an uncharted territory he has no intention of exploring uninvited. 

(And even then...she’s an Imperator, one trusted enough to drive the War Rig and feared enough to galvanize the War Parties of three towns. He has no delusions regarding her innocence, of what kinds of things she’s done and what kinds of things have been done to her.)

She’s never asked about his own need for redemption. He’s not going to ask about hers. Furiosa is dangerous and deadly, made all the more so by being so broken, but she’s also somehow the one thing tethering him to reality. 

Max doesn’t know what that says about his own self. 

They’re still standing in the hall outside the main garage, close enough to the door to hear the other milk mothers’ voices rising up in song. One of the drummer Pups has dragged his instrument over to the circle of large women, and hands start to come down on the taut skin, fingertips and palms and wrists creating a rhythm that is picked up by others and duplicated on thighs and bellies throughout the room. There is very little alcohol available in the Citadel - Max remembers seeing a few bottles in the War Rig, so any produced must go out for trade - but small flasks appear here and there amid the crowd, warming the mourners as they relax into the drumbeat. 

Other drums are brought into the room. People are starting to dance, a regional, shuffling step he recognizes from his wanderings, when Furiosa’s mouth is at his ear. “Let’s go.”

Furiosa is a ruthless killer, a product of a brutal society, and she is everything he should instinctively mistrust, but...he does trust her. She is too bright and too intense, and his face aches with her bruises, but her breath is warm on his skin, activating nerve fibers from his scalp to his toes that he’d thought were long withered away to dust. 

“Yeah,” he manages. “Let’s.”

****

She dreams about Valkyrie. 

She’s accustomed to nightmares, the strange, twisted realities that her brain produces, but this...this is different. She’s back in the main garage, standing on the wall watching the shuffling dancers, the drumbeats a physical presence that soaks into her bones. 

“Dance with me,” Val whispers, pressing against her back, her breath hot against Furiosa’s neck, and then her arms are snaking around Furiosa’s waist, her chin tucked against Furiosa’s shoulder. 

She can’t question why or how. Things in dreams make sense, and this makes sense, and so she just puts her human hand on Val’s and lets herself be rocked to the beat. 

Valkyrie’s lips slide across her jawbone, and Furiosa is suddenly a glowing coal, an engine rumbling to life after far too long asleep. The dancers and the drums and everyone else becomes inconsequential, heat blooming in her core. 

“How long has it been,” Val murmurs, one hand snaking lower, “since someone touched you?”

War Boys press into each other out of boredom or bloodlust, fists pumping and white-painted bodies hard against each other in the shadows of the caverns. The first time one of her fellows offered himself, she’d been out of the Vault for less than a thousand days, and the idea of sex was nauseating. Since then, she’s reclaimed a bit of herself, but only in her room, in the dark, alone. 

Val deftly unbuckles Furiosa’s belt, one hand slipping into her trousers while the other slides upwards, running carefully across her ribs. “Thousands of days,” Valkyrie says, her body a single unbroken line against Furiosa’s back, as solid and reassuring as stone. “That’s how long I’ve missed you.”

If Furiosa is an engine, she is caught in first gear and painfully near her redline, whining against the clutch and aching for movement. She cranes her neck and her mouth meets Val’s, hot and urgent. 

Valkyrie’s fingers start to move, and _oh_ -

The clutch is off and the road is open, and she’s working through her gears as fast as they will go. The acceleration presses her hard against Val’s chest, and the roar of the exhaust builds like a storm, fierce and liberating. 

Val puts her mouth on Furiosa’s shoulder and abruptly bites down, her teeth hard against skin. It’s not what Furiosa is expecting, and it-

-pushes her over the edge into wakefulness. 

She’s grinding her ass back against Max’s crotch in her sleep, mindlessly rutting like a War Boy, and he’s gripping her shoulder, his body very obviously responding. 

She goes completely still, cold shock flooding through her veins. This is _Max_ , what the fuck is she _doing_ , and maybe he’s still asleep-

She feels his hips shift away, an unambiguously deliberate movement. 

He is definitely not asleep. 

She’s still swollen and achingly empty, and all at once, the anger flares bright and white-hot. Joe stole so much from her, but her body is her own, and she will not let his ghost haunt her this way. She rolls over, grabbing a fistful of Max’s shirt. There’s just enough moonlight filtering through the barred window to show his eyes as two glowing circles, pupils blown wide and dark. 

“Do you want this?” she growls, and it comes out hoarse and angry. 

He blinks, clearly startled by her sudden movement and the question, but she can see him working through the gears in his mind. He licks his lips. “Not...not if you don’t.”

“You, fool,” she grinds out. “Do _you_ want this?”

There’s a beat of silence, where she’s suddenly terrified she’s misinterpreted his desire. He’s not a War Boy, he doesn’t do _anything_ mindlessly-

“Yeah,” he breathes shakily, as if it’s something he’s just realizing. Then, “ _Yeah_.” 

“Good,” she says, and then they’re on each other, stripping off clothes and kicking aside blankets in a furious storm of motion. He mouths at the space below her ear as she struggles out of her shirt. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine it’s Valkyrie smoothing her palms down the lean lines of her stomach, running callused fingers over the cage of her ribs, but then his stubbled face brushes across her shoulder and it’s impossible to pretend that anyone other than Max is lying beneath her, his eyes devouring her bare skin with an unexpected hunger. 

Somewhere beneath the heat, it registers that he really does want this, that he’s looking at her the way a War Boy might regard Immortan Joe-

“You okay?” he breathes.

Joe has no place in this. Joe has no place in her head. She doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to analyze. She just wants the roar of the engines, her body aching for movement, for friction-

“Hey,” he says, more forcefully, and then he’s batting away her searching fingers. “Is this okay?”

“Stop asking me that!” 

“I need,” he says, “to _know_.”

Furiosa realizes, a bit guiltily, that asking is as much for him as it is for her. He’s willing, but only if she can meet him halfway, and suddenly she’s not sure she can. 

“I don’t know,” she admits.

He takes a shaky breath. “Yeah.” One hand is resting at her hip, and the other goes up to scrub at his hair. “Me too.”

She’s abruptly very aware that she’s mostly naked, and even though she’s never been shy about her body, somehow this feels too intimate, too exposed.

This is not Joe. This is Max. 

She doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Max says quietly, “Hey...hey,” and pulls her down beside him, carefully tucking a blanket in between their hips. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

He hums. 

“I…” She swallows hard. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

His gaze wanders across the rough stone ceiling. “...s’been awhile, for me. Mm. A long while.”

There’s something in his voice that stops her from asking. “Yeah,” she makes herself say. “Me too.”

“I’m, hm. Not opposed,” he says, and his eyes flick down to her and then away. “I’m. Mm. Just.”

She knows exactly. It’s bound to happen, the messy business of two humans in close proximity. She’s seen it happen on the crews, where the trust formed between a driver and lancer spills over into the bunk, where your rig partner becomes the person you turn to for stress relief. She’s never traded paint with another War Boy - she couldn’t, not when the dusty chalk on their skin reminded her so vividly of Joe that on her worst days, she’d avoided her comrades and tried to isolate herself in the garages - but she understands. Envies, even. It was better when she’d made Imperator, because maintaining her distance was suddenly seen as a result of her status, but that didn’t mean she’d lost that vague yearning for closeness. 

And now, here’s Max, nervously running a thumb along her shoulder while the other makes a vague gesture toward her hips. “I could…” He swallows. “I mean. If you want.”

In her entire life, there has only ever been Valkyrie, and even that is seven thousand days gone, a distant memory like the glimmer of fishscale.

It’s terrifying, but this is _Max_. Max, the healer. Max, whose blood runs through her veins, who has already been inside her more thoroughly and intimately than anyone ever could. 

She tucks her head against his neck and breathes in deeply, resting her truncated arm on his chest and letting the warmth of his skin steady her. She doesn’t know what to expect - the vicious, painful thrust of the Organic Mechanic, perhaps - but...this is Max. She has to try. “...yeah?”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t move the blanket. He kisses her hair, her forehead, the bridge of her nose, until she feels herself relax. His hand move in the slow, lazy circles she’s used to, pressing away the tension in her neck and shoulders, drawing circles around the bones of her spine. 

With his free hand, he traces the lines of her face, her jaw, her neck, ghosting down her collarbone so lightly it’s more suggestion than actual touch. When he gets to the scar on her ribcage, he stops, his breath hitching in his throat. 

“It’s okay,” she says. “It is.”

He hums into her hair. 

His hands keep moving, and when he brushes against the underside of her breast, it’s like a flare has gone off, bright and urgent in a cloudless sky. She arches into his palm and buries her face in his shoulder. When his fingers slip beneath her waistband, all she can think is _finally_ , and when he starts to stroke, she has just enough brainpower to register that he knows _exactly_ what he’s doing, before she stops being able to think at all. 

She was already close before she was even awake, and it’s only scant breaths before she’s tumbling over the edge, shuddering and gasping into his shoulder as the wave crashes down. 

“ _You_ ,” Max breathes. 

It sounds like a prayer.

When they sleep, it’s without nightmares, limbs intertwined and blankets twisted around them. 

****

By the time the sun crests the horizon, the rig is on the platform, the crew ready to go. Furiosa is seated shotgun, her rifle oiled and spare ammunition in a box at her feet. 

Max looks over at her, his hand on the gearshift and his foot on the throttle. “Shall we?” 

The engine rumbles steadily beneath them, and she feels her lips twitch with the memory of his skin. Whatever happens today, they’re riding together on the Fury Road. She nods, and gives the signal for the treadmillers. 

“Let’s do this.”


	68. Chapter 68

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have probably thrown this up yesterday, but I put my foot through the front porch (less seriously for the foot than for the porch) and had to do some emergency construction planning. Apparently I will _not_ be playing the Mad Max video game this weekend; I will instead be replacing the porch decking so the basement doesn't flood come winter. (YAY OLD HOUSES.)
> 
> Now that some of the behind-the-scenes and production footage are starting to come out, I'm noticing some discrepancies between my worldbuilding and what is apparently canon. I'm not going to go back and fix the errors (at least right now - because writing and renovating and apparently Halloween is in two months WHAT I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED MY COSTUME) but will instead be proceeding with the new information as it comes. 
> 
> And you guys. YOU GUYS. I love you. I love this fandom. I love all your comments and your meta and your art and your stories. And for those of you sitting there thinking you have nothing to contribute - YOU DO. YOU'RE HERE. Your voice is wanted and necessary and if you've got something you want to share, you should, because the whole point of fandom is infinite diversity in infinite combinations and your contribution is valid. 
> 
> (I've had a lot of coffee today. But that doesn't make my point not worth stating.)

The road is open, bathed in golden light as the sun creeps up over the edge of the earth. There’s drifting sand across the asphalt, but the rig’s weight holds them down, tying them steadily to the ground. The engine is loud, but solid; Max works it through the gears with a firm hand. 

Furiosa leans over to check the gauges. “How’s the oil pressure? Still holding?”

He grunts. “‘S good, for now.” 

There isn’t enough guzzoline for any accompanying pursuit vehicles. Up on the tanker, Ello, Riz, Miro and Target are riding lancer, and...that’s it. On her last run, she’d shaved her crew down to eighteen, and even that had caused severe grousing in the garages. This rig is smaller, the tanker holding two thousand gallons of water and a thousand gallons of milk, but its size should warrant _more_ protection, not less; if they run into Buzzards, they’re fucked. They are carrying the entirety of the Citadel’s remaining thundersticks and rifle ammunition, and she knows it won’t be enough. 

She keeps her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the telltale flash of a windshield or the glimmer of spikes bobbing through the dunes. Her stomach is a hard knot around the scant few bites she’d managed at breakfast. “Can’t we go any faster?”

“Rather not blow the engine,” Max says mildly. 

Furiosa makes a rude noise and cranes her neck to survey the wasteland. She’s dying to go up and man a lancer’s perch, but the cabin needs a second driver, and before they’d left, Mari told her in no uncertain terms not to stress her ribs by climbing all over the tanker. 

She’s almost without pain now, but there’s still a nagging cough and shortness of breath that she finds maddening. She knows she should feel grateful, but she’s nowhere near as limber or as dangerous as she needs to be. On impulse, she reaches over to the steering wheel and swipes a fingerful of grease; she’d left the Citadel with a bare face, but now that they’re underway, with Gastown rising in the distance, she suddenly needs the black, needs some outward symbol that she is still the force she once was.

It feels like a backward slide, to smear the grease on her forehead, but she can’t afford to be a person right now. She needs the strength and perseverance of her engines, to hold herself like steel. 

Max gives her a sidelong glance, and she suddenly can’t breathe. She doesn’t want to be an engine. She wants to be flesh and blood, to feel his hands-

Her whole body flushes, a curtain of want and heat, and she sees him lick his lips like he’s remembering it, too.

He shakes his head as if to clear it. “You,” he murmurs, but he says it like a War Boy would whisper, _chrome_. 

Max has become her chrome. She wants him in her lungs, wants to inhale him and wear him on her skin.

“You, mm. Missed a spot,” he says hoarsely, and gestures to his left eyebrow. 

The ride to Gastown took fifteen minutes in the War Rig - sometimes less, if she really fanged it - but Max is trying to conserve fuel and not kick up too much dust, so they spend an agonizing twenty-five minutes before the relative safety of the Gastown spires loom up around them. Five minutes out, two Gastown pursuit vehicles pull up alongside, their dark carapaces glistening like beetles in the sun. 

“Flamers,” Furiosa mutters. “Both sides.” She’s had a shot ready in her rifle since before they rolled off the platform, and she flexes the fingers of her human hand, reaching up through the roof access hatch to signal the War Boys to stay steady. 

“We’re sucking fumes,” Max says, flicking the fuel gauge. “If this goes badly, we might get halfway back, if, mm, we’re lucky.”

Furiosa knows exactly what kind of luck she has.

Max eases the rig to a stop at the first set of gates, and Gastown soldiers swarm around them. They’ve always unnerved her, hidden behind breathing masks and dirty cloth; at least with the Citadel War Boys, she could look into their eyes and gain a hint of how to to fight them. 

Strange; it used to be a celebration, coming to Gastown. Her crew would have a few hours of free time while trade was conducted, and they always came back pleased, with souvenirs, treats and needed parts stashed in their pockets. Ello and the others have never experienced that; they’re nervously perched atop the tanker, ready to attack if she gives the order. 

The realization feels like being hit with in the chest; yet another way she’s destroyed something good in this world. 

One of the Gastown War Boys bangs on her door. “You. Get out. Show us the goods.”

Max glances over with concern, but Furiosa just nods, pulling her scarf up over her face and slowly opens the door, dropping to the ground with her hands near her ears. 

She’d forgotten how badly Gastown _burns_. Even with her scarf, the fumes boiling off the oil bog are enough to sear her mucous membrane and make her throat spasm. There’s a gas mask stashed in the cab, but only one, and if Max and the War Boys can’t have one, she’s not going to use one either. 

At least, she won’t until her lungs stop working, which at this point might only be a few minutes. 

“Boss, we good?” Ello calls down.

“They’re just - checking the tanks,” she calls back, trying not to cough. The Gastown War Boy nudges her with the end of his rifle, and she shoots him a glare. 

She opens the spigots one at a time, letting milk and water spill onto the hard-packed asphalt. The Gastown War Boy scrutinizes the flow, and then nods. He gestures up at the cab. “Who’s the other?”

“My driver,” she says. 

“Looks like a wasteland scav.”

“He’s got the brand,” another Gastown War Boy calls over. “Well healed. He’s one of theirs.” 

Furiosa narrows her eyes. “Can we continue?”

The first one grumbles, and waves his gun. “Yeah, yeah.”

She clambers back into the cab, grimacing at muscles sore from her stupid attempt to fight Max yesterday, and the rig proceeds across the long and narrow bridge. 

When they’re through the second gate, a sulfur-yellow Imperator flags them down. “Get out of the rig,” he says. “Come out unarmed.”

“Like hell,” Furiosa mutters. She’s got a pocket pistol in her right boot and two knives tucked away. She has no doubt Max is armed to the teeth. 

She gets out - without her rifle and the more obvious of the two knives - and starts to come around to the front of the rig, but the Gastown Imperator makes an impatient gesture with his flamer. “Don’t move! The Actuary will come to you.”

She folds her arms. “Is he the one in charge now?” She’s only vaguely familiar with the man: one of the People Eater’s legion of human calculators. 

“He will come to you,” the Imperator repeats. “You will wait.”

They wait. 

The sun crawls overhead, and eventually, her War Boys seek refuge on the shady side of the tanker. The rig is surrounded by no less than thirty Gastown boys, armed with flamers and an array of weapons that Furiosa finds frankly amusing. She has four green War Boys and Max on her side, and she herself is nowhere close to optimal fighting condition, especially with the noxious haze that passes for Gastown atmosphere clawing up her still-tender lungs. Her rig has maybe a gallon of fuel left in its tank. They’re outnumbered, and they have no means of escape. 

Beyond the circle of guards, there’s a crowd starting to gather, scavs and Gastowners coming to gawk at the mighty Citadel’s change in fortune. She’s suddenly glad she wore the grease, and she lets the scrutiny tighten her posture. She makes a show of inspecting her steel fingers, of letting the patina glint in the orange-filtered sunlight. Those who don’t know her face will certainly know her by her metal arm, and what she lacks right now in physical strength, she can at least make up for by borrowing from the strength of her legend.

Her posturing must work. Seven more Gastown War Boys show up in the periphery. She glances at Max, perched lightly on the front bumper, and his eyes are dark with heat. 

They wait. 

Furiosa’s anxiety rises with the temperature. If they were going to be killed, it would have already happened, unless the plan is to lull them into complacency before taking the shot. She scans the towers, noting the telltale glint of sniper sights in at least seven places. She hasn’t seen any Citadel vehicles or Citadel War Boys, but she’s barely past the second gate; on a usual run, she’d have driven into the main garage and unloaded the tanker there. 

Is Atrox here? He has to be. The Gastown War Boys are all hidden behind masks and goggles; she doesn’t recognize any combination of body shape and tumors, and no one pops out as someone she recognizes from the Citadel. Any Citadel Boys have been here close to thirty days, and she expects that they’ve taken on the costume of their Gastown brothers. The air is too acrid to go that long without a mask if one can help it, and the white chalk used for sun protection is unique to the Citadel and its aquifer. 

She retrieves a large canteen of water from the cab, and takes it to the War Boys on the shady side of the rig. “Drink,” she instructs.

“How long we going to be out here?” Miro asks. 

She shakes her head. “We’re waiting for the Actuary. I haven’t worked with him, so I don’t know his game.”

Ello scowls, wiping water from his mouth. “We try to run for it, we’re dead before we get past the bog,” he mutters. 

“They need our water,” Furiosa says. Indeed, a few of the Gastown Boys have taken half a step forward toward the canteen, and she can see the want in their yellow-painted bodies. She wonders if they’re from the Citadel, if they’re familiar with clean water and have been suffering in its absence. “We hold fast.”

Her crew is green, but they’re obedient. They drink and nod. 

As the canteen is being passed around, she eyes the tanker. “How was the rig? Any rough spots?”

Target snorts. “Only the road.”

“Could use more handholds,” Ello says, pointing, “there and there.”

“A full crew is going to want more than those two,” she says. “Six more along this side, at least.”

He nods. “When we got time and guzz, I want to take it out and have us ride awhile.”

If they have time and guzz, she wants to go retrieve the War Rig. She doesn’t remember Nux flipping it - she’s heard all about it from Cheedo and Mari, and the details make her chest ache - but she knows that rig, and she knows even crushed by rock and the Doof Wagon, it will still be salvageable.

If Furiosa, Citadel Imperator and scourge of the wasteland, is somehow salvageable, then so is the War Rig. 

“Boss?” says Target, uncertain. 

“Be ready,” she says, and they all sit up a little straighter, eyeing their dusty-yellow Gastown counterparts. 

They wait.


	69. Chapter 69

The Citadel deputation is made to wait so long even the Gastown War Boys start to get bored. The Gastown Boys are obviously not allowed to talk; when one tries to ask Ello about the rig’s engine, one of his fellows hits him hard and the hapless Boy is shoved to the back of the crowd ringing the vehicle. 

Max and Furiosa are leaning against the right front quarter panel; she’s got one eye on the tanker spigots and the other scanning the crowd for threats. 

“Could make a hard turn out, if we had to,” Max mutters, his lips barely moving. “Decouple the tanker, take the rig back out the gate.”

“We’d clip that tower,” she hisses back. “And I count at least eight snipers.”

He blinks and frowns. “I only saw seven.”

She twitches her head to the south. “Third boiler column, middle-distance.”

Max squints. “Mmm...huh.”

“Joined us an hour ago.”

“When you piss someone off,” he drawls, “you don’t do it by halves.”

He’s got a shotgun strapped to his back and at least two pistols under his coat; she can tell by the way he stands. “Why are you here?” she asks. 

He shrugs, his gaze flicking around the crowd. “There’s this, mm, woman,” he says, his voice barely above a rumble. “Can’t seem to shake her.”

“Fool,” she retorts, but she’s irrationally pleased, a warm bloom spreading through her stomach. 

His lips twitch. It’s almost a smile. “Max.” 

****

It’s late afternoon before they hear. Abruptly, the increasingly-less-menacing circle of Gastown War Boys parts, and the Gastown Imperator waves his flamer. “The Actuary will see you. Let’s go!”

The Citadel Boys are all on their feet, and Furiosa looks to Ello. “Be ready,” she says. “Don’t let anyone near the rig.” 

He nods, and the others scramble up the tanker to reclaim their lances. 

Max follows her, and they’re taken through the streets, a contingent of Gastown Boys peeling off the main group to form a phalanx around them. They could have easily driven to the main garage, but it’s obviously a power play, to have them paraded around like prisoners in full view. She bumps her shoulder against Max’s, muttering, “This is Atrox’s doing.” He wants them humiliated, wants everyone to know that the new regime of the Citadel is weak. She’s suddenly very glad that she’d resisted bringing any of the girls, despite Toast’s vociferous protests. 

“No talking!” snaps the Gastown Imperator, and Furiosa allows herself a small smile. He’s wearing Imperator paint above his mask and goggles, but he carries himself with the insecure swagger of the newly promoted. Max catches her eye, and she knows he’s noticed it, too. 

If they choose to fight right now, it’ll be two against twelve. Her chest aches from the sharp Gastown air, but more than anything, she wants to taste blood in her mouth. She can be patient when she has to be, but the longer they’re making her wait, the more she wants to sink her metal hand into someone’s neck. 

They’re walked to the main tower in the center of the city, on a circuitous route no doubt carefully plotted for maximum exposure. Flamers bristle from atop vehicles and overhangs, and she counts no less than thirteen snipers. Almost immediately, Max started telegraphing their locations through a subtle nod of his head or a seemingly-accidental brush of her hand. He’s ready to fight, too, the thick lines of his shoulders hunched and prepared to explode into violence at the slightest provocation.

Everything in Gastown is an ostentatious display of petroleum wealth: the streets are sticky with freshly-applied asphalt, the mud-brick houses are almost cheerfully sulfur-yellow, and even in the daylight, elaborate kerosene lamps made from artfully bent pipe flicker from every wall. The air burns, a combination of off-gassing from the oil bog and fumes from the refinery towers. The further into the city they go, the smaller Furiosa’s lungs start to feel. 

The tower has elevators, scavenged from some dead city and jury-rigged with sputtering gas-powered motors, but the air at least is filtered, and she tries not to cough and gasp as the door are latched closed behind them. It’s too many people for such a small space - they’re surrounded on all sides by sulfurous War Boys - and Max’s eyes are running, two thin trails snaking through the dust on his face. At one point, the elevator walls might have been made of glass, but they were blown out long ago - maybe even Before - and repaired with metal salvaged from vehicles and beaten into sheets. 

She expects to be taken to the People Eater’s office on the penthouse floor - she’s been there a handful of times, as an unneeded guard for Citadel trade delegations - but instead they stop about halfway up, the doors opening into a low-ceilinged hallway brightly lit with oil lamps. The lamps have salvaged headlights set around their flames, and the refractive glass creates a warm, even glow over the line of closed doors. 

Waiting for them is a lean, clean-shaven man, immaculately dressed in the black suit of the People Eater’s accounting staff. Furiosa is less concerned with him than she is with the brooding Prime Imperator by his side.

“Furiosa,” Atrox says, his eyes narrowing. “And a wasteland pet? Are these the best the Citadel could send? The one-armed bitch and a mongrel scav.” The black on his forehead gleams with faintly metallic dust, and he spits onto the floor. 

The accountant raises a hand, and immediately, Atrox falls into a seething quiet. “Your internal leadership squabble has gone on long enough. Trade is being neglected. The entire situation has become...inefficient.”

This must be the Actuary, she realizes, and if he can shut Atrox up, he’s suddenly very interesting, indeed. 

The Actuary squints and looks Max up and down. "Not just any mongrel scav. Nine hundred sixty-four days ago, the Amnesty: unknown wastelander, winner of the Boss 351 Cleveland V8. Rejected all other offers."

Furiosa feels a frisson of surprise. Max had participated in the Thunderdome, and _won_? 

Max grunts. It's barely an acknowledgment. 

The Actuary turns back to her. "Furiosa. Imperator of the War Rig. You have incurred a heavy debt."

"Tell me," she commands. 

"I consider this to be an internal Citadel affair," the Actuary says. "The tables have indicated a change in leadership was inevitable. Seventy-three percent likelihood of a natural death, twelve percent likelihood Imperator coup, eight percent outside assassination, four percent Wretched uprising, three percent remaining aggregated theories."

"I will spill her blood right now," Atrox mutters.

"Blood," muses the Actuary. "Minimum four hundred liters of water is required to produce a single liter of human blood." He cocks his head at Furiosa. "Do you know how many liters of blood you have spilled?"

"We come to trade water for guzzoline," Furiosa presses. 

"Trade," says the Actuary. "Interesting concept: the exchange of one valued good for another at a given rate. You have an excess of water. We do not have an excess of guzzoline. We have just enough. Anything more would be...inefficient." 

"That's the agreement," she snaps. "It has been since Joe established Gastown."

"Change in leadership." The Actuary shakes his head. "Contracts have been broken, penalties incurred. There is a trade deficit. Gastown is owed."

"I will kill her _now_ ," Atrox says. 

The Actuary regards him emotionlessly. "Seventy thousand units of guzzoline and forty-four units of nitro consumed. Fifty-seven pursuit vehicles destroyed. Sixty-three Gastown warriors killed, along with the individual known as the People Eater." He sniffs disdainfully. "For the last, we'll assess no penalty. In his absence, we have discovered inefficiencies to his methods. These have been corrected." He looks to Furiosa. "You came offering water and milk. In the past, produce was also offered for trade. Are you amending this portion of the contract as well?"

"Our crops were destroyed," Furiosa says, with a hard stare at Atrox. "We will have produce to trade in the future."

The Actuary waves a hand. "The future is empty. Prospecting is foolish. I do not trade in tulips or the promise of payment. I will not accept words made of air." He looks at his ledger. "Your debt is...significant."

"We only have a small tanker," says Furiosa. “We can pay in fractions.”

"You ask for credit."

"Yes." 

"Perhaps you do not realize the volume of your debt." 

"Perhaps you’re undervaluing our water," she snaps. 

His eyes are flat and black as stones. “Value is subjective. Your debt is merely a reflection of our numbers.”

“If it had been up to me, the pursuit would not have been authorized,” Furiosa says. 

“You _traitor_ ,” starts Atrox, but the Actuary breaks in. 

“You must have known the consequences,” he says evenly. “Your reputation as an Imperator indicates you are...thorough. You cannot claim ignorance; the liability is yours.”

It is hers. She knows this. She’s known it from the first moment she turned the wheel, and she’s felt it every second since. The guilt burns in her marrow like windborne radiation, sapping her strength, tainting her resolve. She is drenched in blood, cloaked in flies from the bodies of her dead, and none of it is righteous. 

“Your water is sour,” she hears herself say. “It makes your workers weak. We have fresh water to drink and mothers’ milk for healing. I have two thousand gallons of water and one thousand of milk; you can either accept these in trade for an equal volume of guzzoline, or I will take my trade back to the Citadel, and watch you wither into dust.”

“You don’t have the fuel,” Atrox sneers. 

She grits her teeth. “I will walk.”

“You’d leave your trade here?”

“You won’t get any more.” She crosses her arm, making sure her fierce, beautiful new prosthetic is in full view. “The new Council will close the Citadel, and you won’t get a drop unless we return - all of us untouched, including my crew - with a full tanker of guzzoline. They have food and water. They will survive.”

The Prime’s hands clench into fists. “A group of faithless breeders cannot hold the Citadel. The blood of the Immortan will maintain-”

“We are not things,” Furiosa growls. “It is _not_ up to you-”

“I am the _Prime_ -”

“You have no place there!”

Before she can blink, his hands are at her throat and she’s lifted bodily, thrust back against the steel elevator doors, a blade pressed to the soft tissue below her chin. “The Bag of Nails doesn’t scare me,” Atrox hisses. “You’re a useless cunt, you’re traitorous _filth_ -”

She hits him. It’s a terrible idea - she’s outmassed and outnumbered, her heart still pounding from Gastown’s shitty air - but she is fucking _done_ , and before she can stop herself, she brings her metal hand up and smashes it into the side of his face. 

He roars with pain, and slams her back against the door, the knife clattering to the ground as he grabs at his face. As she launches herself at him, she sees the Gastown Boys hovering nearby - “ _Do not engage_ ,” the Actuary instructs calmly, and they must all be from Gastown, because they hold their position - and then Max is there, too, a blur of motion aimed right at Atrox’s legs. 

Atrox is strong; almost as tall as Rictus but wider, a mountain of muscle and cunning. Furiosa is smaller and wheezing, and she’s only just now realizing how much strength she’s lost during her protracted convalescence. Atrox bats her away like she’s nothing, but she rebounds off the elevator door, scrabbling for the knife. As she’s moving, Max gets kicked in the chest and goes flying; the Actuary steps back as he rolls past his slick black shoes. 

She whips the knife through the air, but Atrox twitches, and it clatters to the floor behind him, a faint streak of red marking his path by his ear. She’s grabbing for the pistol in her boot when he hits her, a hard left hook that knocks her to the floor and leaves her stunned and drooling blood, the pistol spinning away from fingers suddenly numb and useless. 

Shots ring out, three in quick succession, but Max has been staggered by the hit and his aim is mediocre. Furiosa shakes herself, sucking air into her lungs and choking as half of it turns out to be fluid. Gritting her teeth, she spits and lurches toward the pistol. 

She doesn’t reach it; Atrox lands hard on her back, and then her forehead hits the floor once, twice, his meaty palm sharply pistoning at the back of her scalp. Max fires again, and there’s the dull thump of a successful shot: the Prime topples to the side, and she kicks, the heel of her boot connecting solidly with his groin. 

Max is back on his feet, but despite the blood spreading down his bicep, Atrox isn’t down. Furiosa gropes for the pistol, but his fingers get there first. She doesn’t even hear the shot - her ears are ringing before her brain even registers the gun’s gone off - and then Max is down on his knees with wild eyes and one arm hanging. 

Terror spikes through her body, a sick, incandescent flush of energy, and she launches herself at Atrox with a grating howl. They grapple desperately; she doesn’t have his mass, but she’s more flexible, and she uses every ounce of her rage as leverage. He gets the pistol to her neck and she hears the click of the trigger, but the chamber is empty.

She doesn’t have time to be grateful. Max is rallying, fumbling with his other hand for another of the guns he’s stashed on his body, but he’s clumsy with shock. She mashes her prosthetic hand into Atrox’s face, the crunch of bone and cartilage echoing up the metal. 

Momentarily blinded, he lashes out but misses, giving her just enough space to dive for the knife. Her first strike slices through his forearm, the blade bouncing awkwardly off bone. Her second gets him through the neck, and the hot spurt of arterial blood is a spurt of triumph. 

Max fires, and this time, his aim is true. Atrox drops backward. 

It’s a long moment before he’s dead, blood fountaining from his carotid and gushing from his chest. 

The Actuary has watched the entire fight, his face dispassionate and utterly still. “It seems the leadership dispute has been resolved,” he observes. “Bring your tanker to the main garage. We will make the exchange.” 

He turns smoothly on his heel and disappears down the hall, leaving Atrox’s body on the floor amid a circle of stunned yellow War Boys.


	70. Chapter 70

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the reason we can't have nice things.

They’re both on the floor, Max on his knees and Furiosa half-curled away from Atrox’s body, when the Actuary leaves. The fight was so sudden, both in its inception and its ending, and she’s still trying to breathe past the blood in her mouth, stars pricking at the edge of her vision. 

Max sways, and then slumps back, his bad knee bending at an awkward angle. He’s chalk-white, sweat popping out in thick beads on his forehead. One hand twitches toward her, his eyes flicking up toward the back of his eyelids. 

She lurches across the floor, trying to grab the collar of his jacket before he hits the floor, and just ends up being hauled along as he falls. He’s pawing at her with his uninjured hand and mumbling something she can’t make out. 

Atrox’s shot got him right below the clavicle, and he’s bleeding badly. She thrusts her human hand against the wound, her metal hand fumbling with his jacket and trying to see if the bullet is still in his flesh. 

He’s gasping, trying to say something, and then it comes out as a pained exhalation,“ _Hurt_ -”

“It went through,” she manages, “it went all the way through.” She yanks off her scarf, balling it up and pressing it against his shoulder. “A few stitches, it’ll be fine.”

He’s shaking his head, clumsily swiping at her face. “You…”

It’s only then that she realizes she’s covered in blood, drenched by Atrox’s final arterial spray. Some of it’s probably her own, and the way her eyes aren’t entirely focusing is probably indicative of a concussion. “Fine,” she says hoarsely. “I’m fine. I’m okay. We won. We got the guzzoline.”

Max nods, something like relief coming across his face, and then he’s dead weight, dragging them both back to the ground. 

Furiosa isn’t sure she has any adrenaline left in her, but there is it, another feverish wave soaking into her muscles. “Help me get him to our rig,” she rasps at the Gastown War Boys.

The lead shakes his head. “Not our duty.”

She can feel Max’s sawn-off shotgun against her thigh. Her fingers close around it, and for a second, she considers using it. “I have _water_ ,” she snaps. “A pouch for everyone who helps me _right now_.” 

The Gastown War Boys hesitate, and then one of them shrugs. “It’s trade,” he mutters, and they heft Max up into the elevator. 

“And the corpse,” Furiosa says. They stare at her, inscrutable behind their gas masks, but she hefts the shotgun. “The corpse is _mine_.”

There’s another moment, and she’s almost sure they’re going to declare her crazy, dumping Max on the elevator floor and walking away, but then two of the War Boys gingerly approach Atrox’s body, and after some waffling, toss him over their shoulders. 

The journey back to the rig is much more direct, but no less of a spectacle. Furiosa’s head is starting to pound, every heartbeat amplified by the nauseating pressure in her skull. She can’t cough hard enough to clear the blood from her mouth, and the tainted Gastown air claws at her innards. Her feet aren’t really responding to her brain, but she forces herself upright, the shotgun clenched in her hand. The crowds of gray-wrapped Gastowners part as the War Boys muscle their way through, Atrox slung like a trophy and _Max_ -

She has to keep him alive long enough to get him back to Mari. Mari will fix him. Mari can fix anything. 

The Citadel War Boys are waiting, bouncing anxiously in their combat boots, and when the Gastown Boys come into view carrying Max, Target howls in anguish from his perch atop the tanker. 

“We’re alive,” Furiosa snaps, staggering up to the rig. “Miro, get these Gastown fools some water. A pouch each.” The pouches aren’t durable, and are designed for single-use trade; she’d hoped to get some repair parts from some of the Gastown merchants, but that’s sand under her tires. The Gastown War Boys unceremoniously stuff Max into the cab, and dump Atrox at its front bumper. 

She clambers in after him, propping him up and feeling for his pulse. Her head is reeling, the nausea pressing hard at the back of her throat. 

Max’s eyes flutter, and he mutters a string of nonsense. 

“Boss?” Riz says. 

“Give me your knife,” she growls. “Give it to me!”

The blade is procured, and she immediately savages the the driver’s seat, tearing the faded cloth from the crumbling foam and wadding it up against Max’s shoulder. “Hold this,” she commands, and Riz is pressing shaking hands against the wound. “Gonna need someone else to drive.”

“Drive the _rig_?” Even Ello looks dumbfounded.

“Yes, the rig!” She drops down onto the asphalt, landing badly on an ankle, the pain spiking up through her thigh. “ _Fuck_.”

Ello must think she’s cursing at him, because he launches himself into the driver’s seat, grinding the starter in panic before he settles himself, and it coughs obediently to life. 

The Gastown War Boys with the water have moved away, but their fellows are still blocking the road. “We spoke with the Actuary,” Furiosa announces, her voice cracked and tight. “We’re clear for trade, so _move_.”

A few of them edge backward, but not all. 

Max is bleeding, and she needs to get him back to the Citadel, but she _can’t_ until she gets guzzoline from the trade. The anger surges up like bile, and she lurches toward Atrox’s corpse, the knife in her hand. 

She stabs at his trousers, breaking off his Imperator sigil and hurling it at the Gastown War Boys with a howl. They falter, but don’t clear the road, so she reaches down and grabs the former Prime Imperator’s flaccid gearstick and with one hard slice, that goes flying at the War Boys, too. 

“Fucking _cunt_!” one of them yelps, and that shatters any restraint she has left. 

She’s shaking with rage and shock, her breath hard in her throat as she hacks at Atrox’s neck. They will know her. They will all know her. She is the Imperator of the War Rig, she is the Bag of Nails. Joe may have been the one who grabbed the sun, but Furiosa is the bringer of death. The words tear themselves from her chest before she can swallow them back, and she hurls them at the crowd: “I am not afraid of pain! I am not afraid of death! I have killed my _crew_ , my _clan_ , my _sisters_!” She reaches down and hooks her metal fingers through Atrox’s gaping windpipe, hefting his bleeding head into the air. “My enemies-”

She brings the head down hard on one of the rig’s cattleguard spikes, and the force of the blow splinters bone, pink brain tissue spattering against the radiator screen. Atrox looks vaguely surprised, eyes bulging and tongue protruding as the contents of his skull are forcefully rearranged. 

Furiosa whirls back at the crowd, teeth bared like the wildest feral. “My enemies are _no challenge at all_!”

There is a deafening silence, and then a soft _pop_ as one of Atrox’s eyes suddenly dangles from its nerve. 

Behind her, she hears one of the Citadel War Boys quietly being sick. 

The world goes hazy, and then Miro is at her shoulder, looking gray and shaken. “Boss…? We gotta go, Boss.”

She coughs hard on a clot of blood, and spits on Atrox’s headless corpse. “Yeah,” she mutters. “Let’s put this place in our dust.”

She suddenly doesn’t have any strength in her legs, so Miro hauls her up into the already-crowded cabin. Riz is practically sitting in Max’s lap, firmly applying pressure to his wound but still panting with anxiety. Ello guns the motor, and the sulfurous War Boys scatter. 

“Main garage,” Furiosa rasps. 

“I don’t know where that is,” Ello snaps, but Miro is already pointing. 

Her bad eye won’t focus at all, her ankle throbs, and the pressure behind her eyes feels like nails stabbing into her teeth. “Boss?” quavers Riz, but she’s so close to puking that she just shakes her head. 

Somehow, they get to the garage, and she muzzily opens her eyes to see Ello’s concerned face. “Boss, they’re asking about guzz,” he says tightly. “Want it all in the pod, or some in the rig?”

Why is he asking her? Ace knows exactly what to - but Ace isn’t here, this isn’t her crew, and she can barely hear over the pounding in her skull. “Rig. Then pod. Then drive.”

He nods, and disappears, and she lifts her head to look at Max. He’s half-conscious and holding the wad of upholstery to his shoulder. “Hey,” he mutters, his eyes desperately locking on her face. “ _Hey._ ”

“Hey,” she whispers, and somehow gets one hand up on his. His fingers entwine hard around hers, pressing down against the blood that’s soaking his shirt. “We did it.”


	71. Chapter 71

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! We're in the throes of trying to redo our porch before the winter rain sets in, and frankly I'm so sore I can barely type.
> 
> Also, question: Should I up the rating to Explicit? I sort of thought that was reserved just for sex (like an X rating on a movie), which I'm not planning on making super-graphic, but I'm realizing the violence here is pretty gross, too.

The stillness of the waste is maddening. 

The Citadel, too, has gone quiet. There is so much riding on the supply run, and the tension covers everyone, muffling sound and movement like a thick blanket. 

There are too many people clustered around the telescope in the milking chamber. Milk mothers have cycled in throughout the day, and right now, it’s only Thimble and Plenty attached to the pumps, Thimble with a feverish Pup cuddled listlessly against her shoulder. 

If he were more mobile, Capable is certain Ace would be pacing, but instead he’s perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the milker’s chairs, his bad leg propped up on a stool and his good leg bouncing with irritation. “They’ve run into trouble,” he grumbles. “Shouldn’t be this long.”

“It’s not even noon,” Cheedo says brightly. “Maybe they’re-”

“Shouldn’t take half the day!” he snaps. 

“Maybe they’re bartering,” Toast offers. “Furiosa packed extra water.”

Ace glowers.

By midafternoon, though, everyone is worried, and as the shadows lengthen, Capable and Toast haunt the telescope. 

She only really seen Atrox once, at one of Joe’s stupid parties where the Wives were dolled up and paraded around. Angharad had been new then, caged in the Vault for barely a full cycle of the moon, and she’d been quietly seething, her posture regal and her eyes frozen with murderous intent. 

Capable had been afraid of Angharad, of her strength, of her power, but then Atrox had walked up to her, run a finger across her cheek, and said to Joe, “This one is pure chrome, Immortan.”

She’s seen Joe come down hard on anyone who tried to touch one of his Wives, but this time, he’d just laughed and raised his glass. “Watch your hand there. That one will bear me powerful sons.”

Angharad had met Atrox’s eyes and stared him down, meeting his cruel gaze with unflappable calm, and it was in that moment that Capable understood not all strength should be feared. 

Sometimes, some killings are necessary, and Capable thinks of how Furiosa hadn’t hesitated to put two bullets into Capto. Furiosa beat a healthy War Boy to death while half-delirious with fever, and killed Joe himself while bleeding out. She has never hesitated to use every resource at her disposal - her rig, her body, her former crew - in defense of the former Wives. She’s ruthless and without mercy. 

And maybe that’s what had drawn her and Angharad together, like two magnets snapping into place. If Angharad hadn’t somehow broken through to Furiosa, Capable is certain they’d all still be in the Vault, praying for the healthy son that would somehow perhaps save them. Angharad and Furiosa hadn’t been friends - had in fact been barely more than civil - but somehow, they’d recognized each other’s strength enough to use it

Furiosa had mentioned the Green Place once, briefly, and then tried to pretend she hadn’t, like frantically scrubbing over muddy footprints. Capable isn’t certain she’d actually meant to escape; even now, she doesn’t think Furiosa believes escape is possible. Angharad had believed enough for all of them, and Capable wonders if Angharad were still here, if things would be easier, if belief is enough to create comfort out of hardship, or if she and Furiosa would have eventually burned each other down to ash. 

Capable has tried to connect with Furiosa, has tried so very hard to bring her into the circle, to include her in the new world they’re building, but despite her best efforts, it just hasn’t worked. It’s as if Furiosa is a shadow, and every time Capable tries to bring her into the light, she seems to vanish. It hurts a little that Max - recalcitrant and twitchy - is the one who she’s chosen to lean on, when Capable and the others have had their arms open to her since before they’d even made the run.

She can’t begrudge them comfort, even if she wants to be the one providing it. 

Toast suddenly goes stiff, leaning into the telescope. “I see movement!”

The mirages slowly coalesce into a vaguely familiar shape, and then it becomes clear: the rig is speeding down the road, not even trying to be cautious. “They’re fanging it. Look at the dust,” Toast says, right as Ace mutters, “Something’s wrong.”

Dag nervously chews her fingernails, Cheedo curled hard into her shoulder. Capable peers through her binoculars. It’s agonizing long minutes before she can see, but when she can, the windshield is caked with dust, and the severed head spiked to the rig’s grill- “What the…”

“I see Max,” Toast says tersely, long fingers adjusting the telescope’s focus. “Ello is driving.”

Capable’s stomach drops to her feet, and everyone starts running for the garage. 

 

****

The War Boys are tumbling off the rig as soon as it’s on the platform, Ello bellowing through cupped hands for the treadmillers to fucking fang it, _fang it_. Several of the Repair Boys jump up on the treadmill to help. 

Keno looms over Capable’s shoulder, startling her as his fingers close around her arm. “What is it?” he demands. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just - do you see that head on the front?”

“Riz is covered in blood,” says Maz faintly. He glances at Cheedo and Mari, who are already digging through their first aid baskets. 

“Where’s Max? Where’s _Furiosa_?”

The lift groans to a halt, the safeties falling into place with a heavy thump. “We got the guzz,” Ello is saying to Toast as she runs over. “We got the guzz, but it went to shit-”

“Where’s Furiosa-”

And at that moment, Furiosa all but falls out of the driver’s side of the cab, and if Toast and Ello weren’t immediately in the way, she’d have pitched off the edge of the lift. She’s covered in blood - literally drenched - and heavily favoring an ankle. 

“Mothers,” Mari breathes, but Furiosa waves her off.

“Max,” she manages, gesturing vaguely to the cab, and lurches toward the front tire to vomit. 

Capable will never understand how Cheedo was ever called fragile, not when the girl stays abreast of Mari without flinching. Max is staggering from a bullet wound to the shoulder, and Furiosa obviously concussed and as belligerent as Capable has ever seen her. 

“Fuckkk…” Furiosa is batting Mari away and leaning unsteadily on the rig. “Max...’s Max, you gotta-”

“I know, pet, I know. We’ve got you both-”

She grunts and would have shoved Mari off the platform if she’d been solidly on her feet. “No, see _Max_ -”

“Daughter of Jobassa, you are trying my patience,” the Vuvalini warns, and the stern authority of her voice would be _hilarious_ if the situation weren’t so dire. 

Furiosa shakes her head and groans. “She’s dead. You’re dead. They’re all dead. I killed them-”

Max is leaning between Cheedo and Riz, heading toward the door, but he locks his knees and makes them stop, twitching his head toward Furiosa. Cheedo and Mari exchange an exasperated glance; clearly, neither of the two stubborn road warriors is going to go without the other. 

“Furiosa, I can’t treat Max without your help,” Cheedo tries. “We need you with us. Can you come?”

Her breath is whistling hard in her throat, and the look in her eyes is wilder than any she’d worn during her fever. “Max...”

“Hey,” he manages, and slips his uninjured arm off Riz’s shoulder to gesture at her.

She weaves unsteadily until she’s at his side, and then she’s pressing her face into his neck, her prosthetic arm tucked around his waist and his good hand palming the back of her head. 

Max whispers something in her ear, and it seems to take, because she sags against him, and lets Cheedo lead them both out of the garage. 

There’s an ache in her chest Capable can’t quite identify. 

“If you’ve got urgent lumps or bumps, you’ll do well to follow me,” Mari instructs the others, “otherwise, it’ll have to wait.” 

There’s a moment of quiet in Mari’s wake, and Capable hugs herself with sudden gooseflesh. 

Keno is staring at the head on the front bumper. “That’s...the Prime,” he breathes. 

“ _Furiosa_ did that,” Miro says, sounding strangled. “Right there. Right in front of everyone. Cut off his gearstick than then fucking _pitched_ it, the Prime, she did that to the _Prime_ ,-”

Ello nods. “Gastown kept us waiting at the second gate,” he says hoarsely. “We were all going mad with waiting, and then they took Max and the Boss away to see some new People Eater, and when they came back, Max was down and Boss went kami-crazy.”

“It’s a concussion-” Capable tries.

“It’s _not_ ,” Miro snaps. “I dunno how she got to you, but she’s that way. I don’t care if she was a Wife before she was a War Boy; she’s the best of us, with everything that means. We all know her. Maybe you don’t, but maybe you should.”

The head is practically split in half, white bone poking through the skin and dark flies starting to congregate. It’s an incredibly violent artifact, both in the intent and the strength of its execution. It’s not strictly necessary, any more than stringing up that War Boy’s corpse during the siege had been necessary; it’s purely for intimidation, to send a message, and the message is terrifying. 

Capable doesn’t know what to do with this information. Even as a knobby-kneed Gastown brat, she’d heard stories of the infamous Bag of Nails, Immortan Joe’s ruthless War Bitch, and when Furiosa had resentfully commandeered the chair by the Vault door, Capable had felt both excitement and fear that such a wasteland legend had been suddenly dropped in their midst. 

It didn’t take long, but the Furiosa who guarded the Vault never measured up to the Bag of Nails. At the time, it was obvious she’d been angry to have been shunted to guard duty, and Capable had burned with the injustice of the situation. The incident with Angharad had scared them all, if only because they’d all seen the blood all over both her and Furiosa, and for one wild, sleep-addled moment, Capable was sure that the Bag of Nails wasn’t on their side. 

Now she knows it’s not so cut and dried. “She’s changed,” she says, but Miro cuts her off. 

“You don’t _change_ , not from being that.” He shakes his head. “What did she tell you? That she’s better now? She’s not a ruthless killer?” He stabs a finger at the severed head. “She’s lying. And maybe she don’t know she’s lying, but she is.”

“She’s here,” Keno interjects. “She got us the guzz. She’s on our side-”

“En’t no _sides_!” Miro snaps. “The second we en’t useful, it’ll be our heads on spikes. She’s an Imperator. It’s what they do.”

“Maybe _your_ Imperator,” Maz flares. “Boss looks out for us. Boss gets us water-” 

“ _All_ Imperators,” he insists. “She tell you she’s for you? Of course she did. And she’ll let you run the Citadel for some days, maybe a hundred, but when it starts getting hard - and it will, and then you can’t hold it no more - you’ll ask her to help, and next thing you know, we’ll all be saluting Immortan Furiosa.”

“Fucking _liar_!” Maz is so angry he’s close to tears, and if it weren’t for Keno’s restraining arm, the Repair Boy would be launching himself at Miro. “She’s not that way. She’s _not_ -”

Miro shakes his head in disgust. “Who do you worship, Immortan or Furiosa?” He gestures to Atrox’s head, to the flies buzzing at his protruding tongue. “Only difference I see is that when Immortan was alive, we didn’t have to kill our own to get guzzoline.”


	72. Chapter 72

Whether it’s Miro’s pronouncement or the adrenaline wearing off, the garage goes somber. There’s guzzoline to be unloaded and the rig to prep for its next run, as well as the other various ongoing projects. 

Capable isn’t sure what she needs to be doing, but Keno takes her aside. “Don’t stay here,” he says quietly. “I can’t say if Miro’s just blowing off steam or if he really means it, but...maybe it’s best you’re not here.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” she says, which is only partially true. His words are spinning through her head, the implications of Furiosa’s violence buzzing like the flies on Atrox’s graying face. 

Keno frowns. “You should be. Before all this-” he makes a vague hand gesture, “he’d just gotten on Capto’s crew, a real chrome gig. He only joined us because his little brother is his whole world, and Capto wouldn’t suffer a Pup tagging along.”

“Is he a threat?” 

“He wants stability for his brother. That’s all. Provide that, and he’s ours.” 

Despite herself, Capable has to smile. “Ours.”

He blinks. “What?”

“You said ‘ours’.”

He’s wearing a thick coat of chalk, but she can still see the warm flush between the cracks. “I just meant-”

“I know what you meant,” she says smugly. She bumps her shoulder against his. “You’re one of us.”

Keno ducks his head and tries to be grumpy. “Shouldn’t be an ‘us versus them’-”

“I know,” she says. “But you’re thinking it anyway.”

“Witch,” he mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. “Fuk-ushima desert witch, getting under my skin.”

She just grins. 

****

But any good mood she might have kindled disappears when she finds herself in the Vault. She doesn’t mean to be there, but it’s where she ends up. Max is sitting on edge of the pool, looking woozy and discomfited while Cheedo carefully stitches up his shoulder. His shirt is shredded, and beneath the tattered fabric, Capable can see the dark lines of his blood bag label inked into his skin. 

“Hi!” Cheedo chirps, a little too cheerfully. “Want to help?” Without waiting for Capable to answer, she nods toward the sink. “Wash your hands and come hold this cloth.”

She’s made wary by Cheedo’s forced enthusiasm, but the sound of breaking ceramic still makes her jump, followed by a frustrated howl and muffled wretching. Mari’s authoritative voice echoes off the stone, her words indistinct but firm. 

Max tries to get up, but he’s hobbled by both blood loss and Cheedo’s firm grasp. “Not until I get this stitched up,” she says patiently, her tone indicating it’s not the first time. “You’re not going to be of any help to her if you bleed to death.”

He grunts, eyes flicking to the far room.

He’s so pale, and Capable wishes she could just open a vein and help him. When they’d returned to the Citadel, they’d found the two remaining blood bags hanging dead from their chains, bled out to revive dying War Boys for Joe’s wild pursuit. By universal agreement, any needed blood must be donated, but in practice, this has proven difficult. Mari and Cheedo had found a stack of the little paper cards the Organic Mechanic used to determine blood type, but like a lot of his equipment, they’d been poorly stored and most couldn’t be used. The Pups who worked in the Chop Shop theorized that more could be gotten from Bartertown, since that’s where the first batch had come from, salvaged from former military sites and the ruins of hospitals, but Bartertown is a dangerous three-day drive to the west, through rough and lawless terrain. Blood has been duly rationed; a handful of willing donors have been identified and typed, but none are universal, like Max. 

It’s not fair, that he’s given so much of himself with so little reward. She doesn’t understand exactly how blood can be different, how it’s not interchangeable when it’s all indistinguishably red, but Mari had been adamant: if blood ended up in the wrong body, the patient will die. 

Furiosa needs Max. They all do. 

Furiosa’s voice rises above the white blur of the ventilation, a confused keening that is so utterly out of character Capable almost doesn’t recognize it. Mari answers, low and steady. 

“Should I go?” Capable asks. 

“Mari has it handled,” Cheedo says calmly. “But I could use the help here. The sooner we get these sutures in, the sooner Max can escape.”

He growls, but it’s cut off with a hiss as she accidentally tightens a suture a little too much. “I’m sorry,” Cheedo says, “I’m so sorry. I wish you’d let me give you something-”

He shakes his head. “No drugs.”

“Martyr,” Capable says, drying her hands. She kneels down beside Cheedo and dabs gingerly at the sticky mass of blood. 

Max grunts. 

Cheedo is being as careful as she can - and she’s always had the best stitching, her tiny fingers nimble and quick with a needle - but there’s a difference between thin fabric and torn skin, and Max is coated in a fine sheen of agonized sweat. The twin stressors of his injury and Furiosa’s audible distress have reduced him to a twitching, frantic ball, and he’s only submitting to Cheedo’s ministrations because without her help, he’s going to bleed out. 

“What happened at Gastown?” Capable makes herself ask. “We got the guzzoline, but...what happened?”

“Called himself the Actuary,” Max mumbles. “Thin. Older. Dark skin. ‘Sposed to be the People Eater’s heir, but, mm. Wasn’t too complimentary. Kept talking about efficiencies.”

She doesn’t know anyone by that description, but even as one of Joe’s treasures, she’d never been privy to his trade meetings. “He shot you?”

Max shakes his head. “No. Atrox. Went to negotiate, and they were both there. The Actuary, mm. Said he’d expected a coup. That all this’s an internal matter to be settled.”

Capable feels a hard spike of anger. “It’s not about leadership, it’s about _freedom_ -”

“Doesn’t matter,” Max interjects. “You know what it means to you. Over there, mm. They got other ideas.” He flinches as Cheedo knots another suture. “They don’t know you. They only know what they get told, and if only this Atrox is doing the telling…”

“We need to meet with them,” Capable says. “Get them to the table and actually talk.” 

Max grimaces. “Seemed like the sort of man you’d, mm. Maybe like to avoid.”

“Actuary,” muses Cheedo. “Sounds like an accounting thing?”

He hums. “Not, mm. Not a humanitarian, that’s for sure.” He coughs a little, and continues. “Said Gastown was owed for Furiosa’s run. She argued. Atrox...disagreed. Things, mm. Got heated.” Capable can see the panic starting to to build in his muscles, can see the tension knotting under his skin. “He had her -” he gestures with his free hand, clenching it in a stranglehold as his fingers shake, “and it got. Mm. Ugly.” He takes a breath, and indicates his wounded shoulder. “Got shot. _She_ got, hm, hit...real bad, and I...” The words are starting to get locked down inside him, and Capable leans against his good shoulder, hoping the contact can somehow soothe him as much as Furiosa does. “We got here,” he finishes. 

“Are you all right?” she asks quietly. “I mean. Besides the shoulder?”

His eyes dart toward the room in the corner, where they can all hear Mari murmuring something as Furiosa pukes. 

“Mari knows what she’s doing,” Cheedo says firmly. She snips the end of the last suture, and starts gently dabbing a strong-smelling herbal poultice onto his shoulder. “This will help fight infection.” Raising her voice a little, she calls out, “Mari? I’m done with the stitches.” 

The Vuvalini doesn’t answer for a long moment, and then she slips out past the curtain with a bowl of red water in one hand and a bloody cloth in the other. She inspects Max’s wound with a critical eye. “Looks good,” she says. “Get a bandage on it, and then, feral man, you need to rest, do you understand?”

He grunts, twitching with impatience as Cheedo starts rolling the cloth around his arm and torso. “How is she?”

Mari frowns. “She’s conscious, so that’s something. She’s still very confused. You both need rest and quiet, but we’ll be checking on her every hour or so to make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.”

Max looks like he’s going to be sick, and Capable leans her head on his back, her heart constricting painfully in her chest. “Furiosa will be okay, though, right?” she asks. It’s not fair. She’d just gotten better. 

“She’s alive,” Mari says, as if that’s enough. She looks over at Cheedo. “I’ve got her positioned to keep her head above her shoulders to try and lower her intracranial pressure, but she’s still vomiting.”

Cheedo nods, as if this means something. “No skull fracture?”

Mari shakes her head. “Not that I can see.”

“If we could construct an x-ray-”

“I’m not bringing a random chunk of radioactive material into my clinic on purpose,” she snaps, and it’s apparently an old argument. “It’ll fry us to our bones. Find me a see-tee scanner and bring _that_ in, then we’ll talk.”

Cheedo sets her jaw, but the argument is over. She gently secures the end of Max’s bandage. “There,” she says. “All done.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and leverages himself up, staggering a bit as the remaining blood rushes from his head. “I’ll. Mmm. Keep her upright.”

“Keep yourself upright,” Mari retorts, but her face twists with sympathy. “You both did a brave thing today. I’m glad you came back.”

Capable thinks of the head on the front of the rig, and wonders if brave is the right word.


	73. Chapter 73

It’s a bad day, followed by a bad evening and a truly awful night. As soon as Cheedo is done bandaging him up, Max shrugs back into his shirt and stumbles into the alcove for Furiosa. He’s almost delirious with anxiety, the blank howl in his skull scouring away what little rational thought he has left. 

There are pieces of a broken cup neatly collected by the door, the stone dark with spilled water. The bed is pushed against the wall, and she’s propped up in the corner, wedged upright with blankets and pillows, miserably cradling a bucket to her chest. 

“Hey,” Max says quietly, and eases in next to her. 

Furiosa slowly lifts her head like it weighs a thousand pounds, and squints at him. “They need to fix you,” she mumbles. 

“Cheedo did.” He gestures stiffly to the bandage. “Just a scratch, mm?”

She looks him over, but there are dark bruises spreading beneath her eyes, a hard knot on her forehead from the hit. “Scratch,” she says dubiously, the syllable gone long and blurred. 

He nods. 

Her eyes slide closed. “Needs t’...fix you.”

His shoulder hurts like hell, but somehow, the ache in his chest is worse. 

They’re a wreck, the both of them. Less than twelve hours ago, he was wrapped tightly around her, and if he brings his hand close to his face, he can still smell her on his fingers, sweet and musky beneath the dense chemical tang of Gastown. 

If these are the repercussions of knowing her that way-

(That’s not true. That’s not how the world works. He doesn’t believe that a butterfly can cause a storm, and anyway, he hasn’t seen a butterfly since he was a boy.)

He desperately wants to touch her, to find some kind of solace between the folds of her skin. He’s been concussed enough times that he knows how badly it hurts, so instead he just brushes his lips across the top of her shoulder. She shudders, and it’s not from pleasure. 

The night passes in a haze of pain. Max is shivery and lightheaded, but every time he starts to drift off, his head slumps forward and his shoulder explodes with agony and he’s gasping and seeing stars, an icy, colorless fog wrapping itself around his head. 

“You need to lie down,” Mari tells him, during one of her visits. She’s trying to coax Furiosa awake. “Easy, pet, I know it’s hard. Just a quick peek at your eyes, mm?”

Furiosa makes a small noise in the back of her throat, the minimal effort required to indicate complete and utter disapproval. 

Mari moves the cranklight beam across Furiosa’s pupils. “Still good,” she says, with no small amount of relief. “Do you know where you are?”

Furiosa mumbles something. 

“Got to speak up, girl. My old ears aren’t what they were.”

The words are barely audible. “...’s fix…”

“Do you know where you are?”

He feels the alarm spike through her, the twitch as her body reacts before her brain even registers the threat. “...where?

Mari frowns. “Where are you now?”

She struggles, the fingers on her human hand digging hard into Max’s thigh. Her eyelids are swollen so badly they’re barely open, but there’s wildness in her grip. He hums quietly, and somehow, she calms a little. 

It’s more or less the same throughout the night. 

Sometime around dawn, his body finally shuts down and he sleeps, despite the aching distress thrumming through his veins. When he wakes up, it’s hours later, the shadows under the door’s curtain stretching long against the floor. Furiosa is curled against him, her breath whistling slightly through her swollen nose. 

She looks worse than she did in the Gigahorse, and even though he knows that’s not true - he knows she’s alive, she’s going to be fine - he can’t stop the sudden rise of panic that wells up, sour in his mouth like bile. 

_Help us, Max._

_You were supposed to help us-_

It’s been days since he last heard the voices - weeks, even, and he hasn’t measured anything in weeks since-

The blackness in his skull splits open like a sudden crevice yawning beneath him, and he stiffens trying to break the fall. His shoulder screams in sudden pain, and then he’s back on the bed, Furiosa gripping his hand and his heartbeat thundering in his ears. 

“Fool,” she mumbles, and he’s so strung out on pain and fear that he has to take great, shuddery breaths to keep from bursting into tears. 

Furiosa is the protector of the Citadel. She has the loyalty of her crews. She has the devotion of the former Wives. She has proven over and over again that she doesn’t need Max’s help. She is an inferno, a hurricane in a single slim body. When she speaks, his entire being snaps to attention. When she brushes against him, the contact explodes against his senses like the Organic Mechanic’s cattle prod, a blinding shock of light and heat that he cannot escape and is helpless to resist. The safest place in a storm is in the eye, and he’s skirting the edge of it, his skin flayed by sand and whipped by gale-force winds. 

It would be easier if he could just empty the entire contents of his bloodstream into her veins, to leave his body behind and just exist in the flow between beats of her heart. How many times was he bled in the Chop Shop? How many times did he wonder if the War Boy lying below would be the last?

(How many times did he wish-)

And here’s Furiosa, an incomprehensible blaze of light and sound, the memory of her body shuddering around his fingers at once electric and terrifying. He’s growing roots, he’s trapping himself in the Citadel’s stone as certainly as if his feet have sunk through the floor. He can’t stay, and he can’t go, and he wants to crawl inside her, wrap her fragile healing ribs around himself like a protective cage and let the steady pace of her fragile, healing lungs drown out the screaming in his head. 

He doesn’t know if he sleeps again; he’s lost so deeply in the haze of blood loss that time becomes meaningless and abstract. He wanders the featureless wasteland of his mind, and only surfaces, a hard and difficult climb through shifting, burning sand, when Cheedo presses a mug of warm herbal milk into his hands. 

“Drink this,” she says quietly. 

Sometime in the night, he’s lost all power of speech. He twitches his head toward Furiosa, still curled at his side. 

“She’s better,” Cheedo says. “She’s not showing any signs of hemmorhage.” The girl looks hopeful. “The last time we woke her, she seemed to be getting more lucid.”

He grunts. 

There’s something in the milk; he can’t taste it, damn them, but he can feel it take effect, the warmth spreading through his limbs, chasing away pain and a chill he hadn’t known he’d felt. He sleeps fitfully, his nightmares vague and shifting, like the deadly winds that blow radioactive dust from the buried cities. 

He’s in the middle of a dream involving a frantic search for a place to pee when Furiosa shifts against him, nudging his injured shoulder just enough to launch him into wakefulness. He actually _does_ have to pee, his bladder urgently reminding him that he’s been in bed for far too many hours, but one of his legs is trapped under her torso, the muscles gone prickly and dead. 

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Gotta wake up.”

She groans.

“I know. I am so sorry.”

Without opening her eyes, she mutters, “If there’s a flashlight in your hand...I am going to murder you with it.”

He hums. 

“I am the Bag of Nails,” she warns, voice scratchy with sleep. “I can do it.”

She could, if she wanted. She doesn’t even know how easily. She thinks she could put a bullet in his brain, and that would be it, but it would be even more effortless than that. She just needs to frown at him, to turn her head, to remove the warmth of her body from against his, and he’s absolutely certain that’s all it would take to shatter him. 

Or she could stay right where she is, and he’ll shatter that way, too. He has no out. He’s damned if he does and and damned if he doesn’t, and right now, he feels the lure of her skin with an addict’s hunger. 

He manages to extricate his leg, pins and needles radiating up his thigh and his bum knee protesting painfully. A journey out to the proper toilet is out of the question, so he staggers to a nearby bucket and pisses for a long time, his kidneys aching with relief. 

When he eases back into bed, Furiosa cracks one eye, the lid swollen and red. “You’re still here.”

Max hums. 

Yeah. He is.


	74. Chapter 74

She comes back to herself slowly. 

Max is curled in a tight ball and shivering in his sleep. With great effort, Furiosa drags a quilt over him, tucking the edges in against his body. He’s too warm, and when she puts a tentative hand against his injured shoulder, she can feel the heat radiating from his wound. 

Fuck. 

Her head is pounding, and her mouth tastes like the inside of an old boot, but she hauls herself out of the bed, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. One of her ankles starts shrilling the moment she hits the floor, and it’s a long moment as she sways in place, trying to decide if it’s worth the long, limping walk.

Max reaches out vaguely, and she squeezes his fingers in reassurance. “Just gonna piss,” she murmurs, and he makes a small noise and retreats back under the quilt. 

Judging by the position of the sun, it’s late afternoon. Cheedo is sitting at the communal table with Dag, sorting pungent bundles of herbs. Both girls scoot over on the bench to make space. 

“How do you feel?” Cheedo asks. 

“Face hurts. Head hurts.” The lights are too bright, and every little noise grates on her senses. She hasn’t felt this bad since the night she and Valkyrie stole of a bottle of the Keeper’s infusion spirits, and spent the next day fantastically hungover. 

She doesn’t remember _not_ drinking, but the lump on her forehead and the swelling on her face tells her whatever happened, it probably wasn’t a celebration. She lets herself lean against Dag’s shoulder, her own head too heavy and swollen to support with the aching muscles of her neck. “Think Max is too warm.”

Cheedo nods, her lips going into a thin line. “He’s been running a fever since early this morning. Mari isn’t too worried; we cleaned his wound, and any infection should run its course in a couple of days.”

Furiosa hears the words, but before she can file them away, an inexplicable, overwhelming sadness comes crashing over her. It hurts to cry, but she’s _leaking_.

Dag wraps an arm around her. Her fingernails are dark with soil, the sharp tang of crushed herbs wafting from her skin. “Garlic,” she says, pointing to a bulbous white tuber, and then indicates two piles of leafy greens, one tender and one woody. “Oregano. Thyme.” 

There’s something about the mixture of smells that reminds her of dark spaces, of blood on her hands and the overwhelming sense that Joe is right behind her-

“This is what we fed you,” Cheedo says gently. “And you got better. Max is strong. He’ll get better, too.”

She knows. She _knows_. She recognizes the smell, but her brain is still a thousand shattered pieces, and it _hurts_. Furiosa makes herself nod, even though that hurts, too. “Never said thanks for that,” she says, the words heavy in her mouth. 

Dag makes a noise in the back of her throat and Cheedo immediately shakes her head. “You got us here,” Cheedo says earnestly. “You’ve protected us and helped us. You don’t need to say thanks.”

They don’t know what their freedom cost - they can’t, and if she can help it, they never will - but even that thought is too heavy, so she just closes her eyes and lets herself doze on Dag’s warm shoulder. 

Eventually, Dag’s particular bone structure becomes too uncomfortable. “You could soak your ankle in the pool,” Cheedo suggests, as Furiosa hobbles upright. “It might help a bit.”

It’s not broken, just a sprain. The cool water would feel amazing, but...staying out here would inevitably involve talking, and the notion she would have to carry on a conversation is overwhelming. Besides, she kind of needs to get back to Max, and the fact that she _needs_ to is both shattering and infuriating, and it’s way too much emotion to hold in her body right now.

“I can at least make you a cold compress,” Cheedo offers. 

Furiosa shakes her head, once, slowly, but the motion still pounds against the confines of her skull. “S’okay,” she lies, and limps back to bed. 

****

Max burns for three days, Furiosa pressed against his back and caught in a dark lassitude. He stares at the far side of the room for hours, his eyes tracking something only he can see. He grunts responses and whines protests to questions she can’t hear, and she can only lie there and let her aching body be a bulwark to his nightmares. 

She’s had concussions before, so she’s familiar with the sullen filigree that rises above the headache, the poison moodiness that sinks into her bones. The bruises on her face change from red to blue; she hasn’t seen her own reflection, but her probing fingers have established she’s wearing an Imperator’s mask under her skin. 

She thinks of Miss Giddy’s tattoos, of the history of the world she’d borne in her very flesh. Furiosa will never not be an Imperator; she will never be able to wash the blood from her hands or erase the atrocities she’s committed. She can scrub away her grease, can grow out her hair and call herself reformed, but like the words inked into Miss Giddy’s body, the past lingers, indelibly etched into her memory and her sleep. 

The tattoo equipment is somewhere; she’s sure one of the girls has Miss Giddy’s old needles - probably Dag - and the Organic Mechanic’s gun is too valuable to have been scrapped. She spent so long using first the chalk and then the grease as a mask, as a separate identity she wore to hide her true self, that she’s not certain her true self even exists. At some point, Furiosa-the-Vuvalini was subsumed into Furiosa-the-Imperator, and even if she spends the rest of her life trying to reclaim herself, she knows it won’t be clean. A dent can be knocked out of a piece of metal, the surface sanded and polished, but it’s never the same; there will always be a structural weakness, a scratch, some hint of the repair that was done. 

Perhaps it’s better if everyone can see the dent, can see the repair attempt. She spends a long time running human fingers over tender bruises, wondering if she has the courage and the strength to be so honest. 

****

Max comes out of the fever looking dazed, like he’s been attached to a belay line and spun beyond the tolerance of reason. For a couple of days, he seems to have forgotten how to speak, communicating with only the barest shrug or grunt. He watches her with an expression of dim confusion and a slight cock to his head, as if he’s not entirely convinced she’s not a figment of his delirium. 

It might be better for him if she were. She could be the manifestation of dark vengeance, come to paint the walls with his enemies’ blood. Instead, she is all too painfully human, squinting with a residual headache and feeling too thin and exposed in his gaze. 

They haven’t talked about what happened. Trying to remember the run to Gastown is like looking straight into the sun; everything is too bright and blurry, and when she shifts her focus, there are white, empty spots in her memory. The night before is even more of a mess. She recalls both Valkyrie and Max, but they’re tangled up and overlapping like double vision, and she’s not sure it wasn’t just an erotic dream. 

If it was real - and she feels shivery and completely unprepared, thinking that it might be - she sort of wishes she’d sucked a mark on his skin, so provide some tangible evidence. 

Regardless, neither one of them is in any shape to be trading paint. He’s healing quickly, but still a little woozy from blood loss. She’s supposed to be staying quiet, letting the scrambled matter of her brain settle into its usual place. 

When they both can walk, they stagger across the bridge to the middle tower, taking refuge in the cool darkness of her room. They curl up in her bed like War Pups, a careful tangle of arms and legs, and she wonders how it got to be that she can’t feel safe until she feels the bellows of his ribcage beneath her stump.


	75. Chapter 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per a few suggestions, I'm upping the overall rating to Explicit. I'm not planning on having any graphic sex, but it's been pointed out that the violence gets pretty gross. Sorry about that. 
> 
> Also, the run to Gastown wasn't supposed to go _quite_ that pear-shaped, so I'm scrambling a little trying to get the plot back on track. Oops. 
> 
> I don't think I've told you all recently how much I adore you. I wish I had time to personally thank each and every one of you lovely people for your lovely comments - thank you thank you thank you - but instead, I'll just keep giving you chapters. How's that?

The Citadel owes Gastown a water debt. While Furiosa’s been out of commission, an emissary has come, delivering a long document to the Council detailing the amounts due. A Gastown war party waits protectively just beyond the Citadel’s immediate borders, but the emissary comes alone on a single bike, handing over the invoice and leaving. 

The Actuary has tallied the Gastown losses to Furiosa’s actions with an exacting hand, measured them against the usual loss rate, and found her to be a very significant negative impact on the economy. The interest rate is usurious, and in maddeningly thin and precise script, the Actuary instructs the Council to evaluate their relationship with Furiosa, lest Gastown be forced to consider more overt methods of debt collection. 

As far as threats go, the Actuary lets his numbers do the speaking; it is emotionless and all the more terrifying. She doesn’t actually recall her conversation with the Actuary, but there’s something in his handwriting that makes her skin crawl. 

“Did I hit him?” Furiosa mutters to Max. She’s feeling an urge for violence. “Please tell me I hit him.”

He huffs, lips twitching with the ghost of a smile, but shakes his head.

“This isn’t reasonable,” announces Plenty. “We didn’t ask for aid. We shouldn’t have to pay for what Joe did.”

“But we can pay,” says Capable. “If it keeps the peace, shouldn’t we?”

Toast frowns. “If we just say yes, we look weak. We’re not beholden to the old treaty any more than they are. Joe’s gone, People Eater’s gone: it’s a blank slate.”

“We should argue,” agrees Jilly. “But only to prove they can’t push us around.”

Ello shakes his head. “Gastown’s got the vehicles and the muscle. They’ve got our War Boys.”

Toast nods in agreement. “They’ve already proven they can hurt us.” She points to the section where the Actuary demands that Furiosa be ousted. “And this is bullshit.” She looks at Furiosa. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re one of us. He can go fuck himself.”

It’s unequivocable, and she doesn’t deserve that. The rational thing to do would be to cut all ties, for the Council to declare themselves independent of Joe’s influence. They should cast her out among the Wretched, like Joe tried to do so many thousands of days ago. 

“Gastown does not dictate our allies,” Plenty agrees. She regards Furiosa. “You aren’t the only one here who worked with Joe. It’s been hard transition, but you’ve given us no cause to justify considering the Actuary’s demand.”

“She’s _helped_ us every step of the way,” Capable bursts out. “Of course she hasn’t given us any cause-”

“That’s what I said,” Plenty retorts. 

“I’m still a former Imperator,” Furiosa breaks in. “Part of Joe’s leadership.” She hates saying it, but it was a choice she’d made, and she’ll stand by it if it kills her. “I am the highest-ranking person to survive the coup-”

“The _changeover_ ,” interjects Capable.

“-the highest-ranking person to survive,” Furiosa continues. “You have no reason to trust me. You’d be foolish to accept me at my word.”

“Of course we trust you,” snaps Toast, just as Capable says earnestly, “Furiosa, you know that’s not true-”

“What are your intentions?” Nakmin breaks in. He’s been quiet so far, as he always is, rarely offering more than a few monosyllabic contributions, but now he’s shifting in his seat. “You said it yourself. You were an Imperator, but you’ve avoided these meetings. Could be seen as you not having faith in the strength of the Council.”

Dinks, the quartermaster, nods. 

“She’s been sick,” Capable says. 

Plenty raises an eyebrow. “But she’s better now, and it’s still a valid question.”

The red-haired Wife looks about ready to launch out of her seat. “I can’t believe we’re questioning _Furiosa_ -”

“You _should_ ,” Furiosa snaps. The headache that’s been lurking in the back of her neck starts to creep upward toward the front of her skull. “You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust anyone. Trust will get you killed out here.”

“That’s not how it is anymore-”

“Your intentions,” Nakmin repeats quietly. “I don’t question your dedication, but I am curious.”

Her intentions? She has no intentions. Her first intention was to get the hell out, but that didn’t work, and then she’d resolved to hurt Joe like he’d hurt her, and then Angharad had convinced her to take them all to the Green Place.

The Green Place doesn’t exist anymore, and neither does Angharad. She resists the urge to glance at Max. She’s been reacting to threats for so long that the simple question - what does she see as her future, what does she see as her role in the changing Citadel - sends her skidding into loose sand. She’s suddenly spinning her wheels, unable to gain traction. “My intention is to serve,” she says, finally. “I’m a warrior, an Imperator. I have a very specific skillset, and I’ve done things that cannot be forgiven. I don’t have a place here on the Council-” Capable makes a noise of protest, but Furiosa barrels on, “-but I’m here as a resource. An asset. ”

“You are not a thing, Furiosa,” Capable murmurs. 

“I’m _trying_ not to be,” she says honestly. “But I know what I am and what I’ve done. If you cast me out, I’ll go. But...I’d like to stay.”

“Can’t go,” snaps Ello. “Who’ll be the Boss, then?”

“Ace,” she retorts. “Or _you_.”

He’s so startled that he actually shuts up. 

Nakmin considers, and then nods and leans back in his chair, satisfied. “Thank you,” he says. 

“We should send a document of our own,” Toast announces. “A counter-proposal. One that outlines how Gastown enabled Joe over the years, and is complicit in his crimes.”

Jilly grins. “I like that. That’s good. Give ‘em a taste of their own medicine.”

“Furiosa,” says Capable, tentative and gentle, “are you willing to help us with this?”

The question is offered without rebuke, but Furiosa knows exactly what the work will entail. As the Imperator with the War Rig, she’s driven between Gastown and the Citadel hundreds of times and overseen the exchange of all manner of cargo. She knows exactly how many bottles of potato liquor will bring Joe a full-life breeder, how many gallons of guzzoline a fresh human corpse might fetch at the Gastown meat markets. 

She closes her eyes, already feeling the nightmares prickling at the edges of her skin. Every instinct screams at her to refuse, to shut down, to retreat and wall away the memories before they come sinking back through, but - _we keep moving_. 

“Yes,” Furiosa says. “I can help.”

****

“Gastown is poison,” Furiosa says to the assembled Council. “They’re not self-sustaining. They can’t be.” After a break, they’ve all reassembled back in Joe’s former rooms to discuss the counter-proposal. Capable has the fastest, neatest handwriting, so she’s taking notes. 

“I’ll drink to that,” mutters Jilly. “There’s water there, but you can set it on fire. Water en’t supposed to burn.”

“Nothing grows,” adds Capable. She remembers coming to the Citadel, of seeing little green sprouts in every corner and crevice, life clinging to the stone wherever it could. It had seemed like a miracle. 

“They’re dependent on trade for the majority of their non-petroleum supplies,” Furiosa continues. She has her human hand clasped around her metal hand behind her back, her body rigid with tension. Max is lingering nearby, slouched in a chair at the end of the long table, a sawn-off shotgun disassembled and neatly arranged in front of him. He’s meticulously scrubbing each piece with a scrap of greasy cloth; even though he looks like all his concentration is being put into polishing the metal, Capable is one hundred percent certain that he is intently focused on everything Furiosa has to say. 

She still doesn’t know what to make of their relationship, and Cheedo’s constant speculation isn’t helping. She’s not sure it’s any clearer to Max and Furiosa themselves.

“So they can’t survive without us,” Dinks says. “If we withhold water, Gastown dies.”

Furiosa considers. “They have their cisterns and a small aquifer. Without us, they would still be able to trade with Wastelanders. It would be hard, but they wouldn’t die outright.” She points at the map spread out on the table. “As we all know, Joe established the Citadel. Gastown and the Bullet Farm were created to support him and his army. They have never been independent.”

“They owe their very existence to the Citadel,” Jilly says. “So they should be _begging_ us.”

Furiosa shakes her head. “Memories are short. We work with them as they are now. We remind them that they’re not blameless.”

“And we’ll help them engage their own people,” adds Capable. 

“We should make a list of their crimes,” says Plenty. “Throw it back in their face. The People Eater...I’ve heard stories.”

“The Actuary, mm.” Max twitches a little, as if he’s surprised to be speaking up. “The Actuary said removing him, mm. Revealed inefficiencies.”

Dinks frowns. “So he’s grateful we did that?”

Max ducks his head. “Enough to, mm. Not fault us.”

Capable watches Furiosa’s face go carefully blank, sees the flare of her nostrils as she breathes against a wash of anxiety. 

“I don’t understand how to help her,” Cheedo had said in frustration the other night, slamming closed the thick medical text she’d been leafing through. “This is all about blood and bones. I can _see_ her hurting, but I can’t _do_ anything about it!”

“That’s a book on the physical body,” Mari had said gently. “Sometimes injuries happen to the spirit, the soul. Those are harder to heal.”

“In the Before, there were many names for it: shellshock, PTSD, battle fatigue,” Amy added. She’d been knitting, a mass of pale thread curled in her lap as her needles clicked between thin, old fingers. “All of it the same, though. Just folks who saw too much.”

“It can be fixed, though, right?” Cheedo looked so young right then, her face lit by the orange glow of the gaslamp, the book clutched tightly to her chest. “Like you can mend a bone, right?”

“It’s harder, but not impossible,” Mari allowed. “These things come in time, and our job is to be calm and supportive as best we can. Now, my girl, if a Pup came in complaining of a toothache, what would your differential diagnosis be?”

Now, sitting at the Council’s long table, Capable surveys her colleagues. The more she listens, the better she gets to know them, the more she understands that not a single person has escaped Joe’s rule unscathed. Even Ello and Keno, who are representing the War Boys and Repair Boys, respectively, bear the scars of the Immortan, although they’re slow to recognize and acknowledge it. 

Keno catches her staring, and raises an eyebrow, a smile playing at his lips. She feels heat creep into her cheeks, and turns back to her notes. 

“-and children,” Furiosa is saying dispassionately, her eyes blank as an empty sky. “The alcohol produced by the Citadel was traded specifically for breeders; most of the stock was reserved for runs to Bartertown, since the People Eater often accepted a dead body in exchange for a live one.”

“Wait, he was _actually_ eating people?” Cheedo bursts out. “That’s not just...his name?”

“Longpig,” says Jilly. “Gastown eats what it can get.” She shrugs. “It en’t bad.”

“Sometimes there’s more bodies than our composter can handle,” Nakmin adds quietly. “I tried not to wonder where they went.” Beside him, Dag hugs herself uncomfortably. 

The draft takes all day. Furiosa shifts on her bad ankle, but otherwise barely moves. She speaks until her voice disappears, and hoarsely keeps going on about trade, of women and girls taken in exchange for guzzoline and saved for the Citadel, of gas masks and medical equipment pillaged from outlying settlements to satisfy the demand of those living under Gastown’s plume. She keeps her hands clenched behind her back, her posture military-straight, but when she talks about quashing an attempted Wasteland raid, done in retaliation for a settlement’s well being poisoned by Gastown drilling, her eyes go watery and distant. 

Capable thinks of the Vuvalini, of the many voices painfully describing how the Green Place had gone sour. 

The list is in no way exhaustive. It can’t be, not with forty years of history piled up between the towns. There are bad deeds on both sides, and for the first time, Capable starts to understand exactly what it means to be an Imperator. As a child, she’d understood the Imperators to be like War Boys, but full-life and in charge, lesser warlords under the Immortan’s control. As one of Joe’s Wives, she’d seen them to be his eyes and hands in the Wasteland, delivering trade and protecting his territory. She’s been able to guess what they’re capable of, but hearing it spelled out, hearing Furiosa flatly describe the things she’s done…

She remembers the day she’d first seen Furiosa cry, when she’d smoothed the sponge over the former Imperator’s half-healed wounds, and felt the shaking sobs that came bubbling up like newly-tapped crude. 

Capable has seen cruelty. She’s known cruel people. She’s felt Joe’s bruising grip as he forced apart her thighs, and she’s known the agony of hunger and fear. She’s always believed cruelty to be a mistake, to be a last resort. If she said the right phrase, if she listened hard enough and treated others with kindness, the cruelty might be avoided, and when she’s been hurt, it’s because she hasn’t tried hard enough, hasn’t yet made the connection that will lead to understanding and peace. 

It hurts to hear what Furiosa has done. It hurts to hear about the choices she’s made, and it hurts to see Furiosa herself suffering, but at the same time, as Capable looks over her notes, she feels like she understands Furiosa a little better. She knows Furiosa was a Wife, once, but the thousands of days between her stay in the Vault as an occupant and the time she’d been assigned there as a guard have stood as a seemingly-insurmountable wall between her and Capable and her sisters. 

It’s starting to make sense as to why Furiosa and Max seem to have made a connection. The Wasteland bloodbag and the Wife-turned-Imperator know what it means to fight. For all their rebellion, Capable and the others have been relatively sheltered, and for that...she’s grateful. 

By the time the shadows are long and dark, the Council finally declares the document done, and everyone gets up to stretch, massaging muscles gone stiff from sitting so long. Max has cleaned each of his guns at least three times, a nervous mechanical tic. 

The room empties out until it’s just Capable organizing her papers, and Max and Furiosa sitting at the far end of the table. He’s murmuring quietly to her, her head tucked close to his shoulder, and whatever he says, she nods, weariness carved deeply into her face.

Before she leaves, Capable pauses. “There’s a large room near the Milking Mothers,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ve been, but it’s where we’ve been staying in the evenings. It’s cozy. You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”

Furiosa and Max look at her like they’ve just realized she’s still in the room, and Capable knows then that tonight won’t be the night. “Thank you,” says Furiosa hoarsely. 

She has to keep offering. Maybe one of these days, her kindness will break through.


	76. Chapter 76

They’re both still healing, but after getting food, while Furiosa is buzzing with a tired, anxious energy, Max is falling asleep on his feet. They make it back to her room - their room? Should it be called their room now? She doesn’t know - and he immediately curls up in the sleeping alcove, his back to the stone and one hand tucked protectively into his jacket, no doubt resting on one of his shotguns. 

“You gonna sleep?” he mumbles. 

She’s pretty sure he’s asking if she’s going to be all right and he can relax, or if she’s planning on taking a long walk off the top of the tower. 

Oddly, she doesn’t feel weighed down by darkness. She’s spoken her piece, and now the others know her for who she is. It’s not the entirety of her career - not by a long shot; it would take days to list her sins - but...it’s a start. And she’s exhausted, but somehow, the tiniest bit lighter. 

_Sunshine is the best disinfectant._

Damn it, Mari. 

She pulls one of the blankets up around his shoulders. “I’m okay. I promise.”

He grunts. “Knew that. Asked if you were gonna _sleep_.”

“Eventually.” She needs to move. After holding herself so stiffly all day, her muscles are aching for the deep, sweet burn. 

He nods, but his eyes are already closed. “Mmkay.”

She makes sure the door is locked, and ends up jogging a few flights of stairs before her bad ankle makes it clear more stairs are strictly out of the question. The Citadel is largely quiet in the dark; there aren’t enough blackthumbs or vehicles to warrant running the garages at night, so there isn’t shop noise to bounce between the three stone towers. 

Walking hurts, but she’s still feeling jittery, so she limps through the corridors, and finds herself near the floor the Milkers have claimed as their own. 

Capable had said she’d be welcome…

She didn’t expect to be here, and it’s obvious none of the girls did either, because when Furiosa appears in the doorway, they all start talking at once. 

“You’re _here_!” exclaims Toast. “Capable didn’t think-”

“We thought you’d be tired-”

“Come in! Come in!”

And then Cheedo is tugging her inside, making her a spot amid a nest of pillows. She drags over a footstool. “Put your ankle up on this. It’s important to elevate. Would you like some tea?”

It’s overwhelming, all the girls talking at once. Amy’s stretched out on a nearby mattress, her back against the wall and Mari’s feet tucked under her knees. There’s a mound of pale yarn in her lap, her needles clicking merrily as she knits what looks to be the beginnings of a blanket. 

Cheedo cheerfully details what they’re all doing: the blanket is for Dag’s baby, and the peas Dag and Toast are shelling are apparently a variety that survived the fires, the seeds destined to be dried and saved for the next planting. “Capable’s editing the draft of the Gastown proposal, and I’m reading about dentistry. How do your teeth feel?”

Furiosa blinks. “Um. Fine, thanks.”

If anything, the girl looks crestfallen. “Oh. Okay. That’s good, I guess.” 

When the peas are done, Dag moves over to curl up against Cheedo’s legs, one hand idly stroking the gentle swell of her belly. Toast pulls out one of her guns and a cleaning cloth, and starts carefully breaking it down. Amy’s discussing pattern with Mari in low, casual tones: “I know you drop the stitch on four and pick it back up...” 

“No, that’s how Ellie used to do it, and she showed you wrong.” 

“It’s not wrong, it’s just different-” 

“If it’s different, it’s not the same pattern. Here, loop on your thumb…”

Capable’s pencil is a soft, skritching undercurrent as she works. 

It’s the sort of calm, domestic moment she hasn’t felt in thousands of days. It’s almost foreign, if it weren’t so comfortable. The anxious buzzing has died down to a slow murmur in the back of her skull, and Furiosa lets the quiet of the room wash over her. 

“You spoke well today,” says Dag, unexpectedly. 

“I know it was hard,” Capable adds. “Thank you.”

There’s a brief flutter of panic, but Furiosa swallows it back, and nods. 

“Katie would have been proud of you,” says Mari quietly. Amy hums in agreement. 

Would she? Or would Katie just be horrified at what her initiate had become? Would she be glad that Furiosa survived, or would she be upset that the skills she drilled into her young student helped create the feared Bag of Nails? 

Furiosa doesn’t know. After a full day of lining her sins up on the Council table, the weight of all she’s done is heavy on her shoulders, biting sharply into her skin.

“What was she like, Furiosa?” Dag asks, behind a one-handed muzzle of her own gnawed fingernails. “Your initiate mother.”

Furiosa swallows hard. “Fierce,” she says.

It’s too much for Cheedo. “Just once,” she bursts out, “ _just once_ , I want you to say someone was _kind_.”

She feels something freeze inside, a quick pang of guilt that she’s done something wrong. 

“Kind? Katie wasn’t kind,” Amy chuckles. “Subtle as a brick, that gal. Fierce describes her very well.”

“She must have loved,” Cheedo argues. 

“Love can be very fierce when it’s that strong,” says Mari quietly. Her dark eyes move to Furiosa. “She loved you so much, my pet.”

Periodically, she has vague memories that bubble up without warning, triggered by everyday occurrences - a particular tone in an old diesel engine, the sensation of a northern wind blowing cold on her face, the phantom ache of rope on her missing wrist - but she doesn’t dwell on them, doesn’t chase after them or permit them to linger. When she stopped being a person and started being a machine, she built herself an impermeable shell of thick steel and unwavering weld lines, and anything that didn’t immediately pertain to her survival was scoured away by the storm of seven thousand days. 

But the words, those are carved too deeply to erase. In the first hundred days, she’d whispered them like a prayer - _I am one of the Vuvalini, of the Many Mothers. I am the daughter of Mary Jo Bassa. My initiate mother is Katie Concannon_ \- until the words blurred into nonsense and the syllables lost their meaning. 

“Furiosa?” Mari prompts gently.

“It doesn’t - it doesn’t matter,” she stammers, and then angrily: “It’s not - it’s over. It’s done.” She’s suddenly lightheaded and dizzy, all the warmth sucked out of her limbs. Her human hand has gone ice-cold, and she tucks it under her armpit, trying to hide the fact she’s trembling. “What Katie taught me helped me survive. I owe her for that.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the Vuvalini says calmly. 

“It’s what I’m saying.” The quick bloom of anger is like a gasfire, out of control as soon as it flares. “She taught me to fight, and that’s what I’ve done. It’s what I do. I’ve fought so _you_ don’t have to,” she adds, pointing a finger at Cheedo, who shrinks under the unexpected onslaught. “Everything hurts. Katie said that. I’m the one taking the hits.”

“No one said you weren’t,” Capable says carefully, and the tone of her voice suggests Furiosa isn’t being reasonable. 

“Of course you weren’t,” Furiosa shoots back. “You wouldn’t. You’ll just hum and hint and imply that violence is unacceptable, that it’s wrong, that _I’m_ wrong, but the thing none of you understand is that _this is how the world is_. You have to hit first, shoot first, kill first, and every life you take is a fucking celebration, because it means one less person trying to kill you back.”

Capable and Toast exchange a look. “It doesn’t _have_ to be that way,” Capable tries.

“It _is_ that way,” Furiosa snaps, and then realization washes over her like a splash of burning guzzoline. 

The girls think they don’t need her - or wait, that’s not true. They’re threatened by her. She’s the last Imperator, the last of Joe’s regime, and her very existence is a reminder of the Immortan. As long as she’s within the Citadel walls, running under Citadel colors, she’s a potential threat to the Council, and rather than challenge her outright, they’re trying to psychologically weaken her with their constant prodding, trying to undermine her stability so that when they make their move, she has no one left to turn to. She’s clever, but she’s a warrior, a weapon, and she’s no match for the political scheming of pampered former Wives. She just spent an entire day telling them exactly what she’s done, and now that they know-

She should go. She should just leave. She’ll take a car and rabbit, make like Max and find some solitary end in the desert-

She’s so keyed up that she almost lashes out when Mari touches her. “Furiosa,” Mari entreats. “Don’t go. Stay with us. It’s all right.”

“It’s not-” and then her throat closes around the words, and she’s left shaking and breathing like she’s just run from Gastown, nerveless and twitching as a gutted lizard. 

“Should I get Max?” Dag whispers. 

Fucking Max. She feels like she’s been split open nose to trailer hitch, her innards glistening and quivering with the shock of dry air. Are they using Max to numb her? Is he working with them? Is that why he came back, to try and... Who is he working for? 

She’s trusted people. She _knows_ better. She’s been lulled into complacency, and she’s gotten dull and slow-

And then Mari’s hands are on hers, leathery palms firm against her clammy skin. “Furiosa. Focus on my voice. I need you to breathe.”

It hits her then, that she’s having another panic attack, that none of this is real and she can’t know what is, and all the frustration comes boiling out as a long, hoarse scream that seems to take her entire body and turn it inside out, leaving her bent double and soaking with shame. 

Furiosa leans into Mari’s shoulder, concentrating on the smell of herbs that lingers in the long smock she wears. Mari palms her head, gently smoothing the unruly mop of wavy curls that’s sprung from her formerly-shaved scalp. 

She hasn’t cut her hair since she came back to the Citadel, a vague sort of statement of her new personhood, but she feels...disheveled. There’s so much chaos in her brain; all of a sudden, she needs the clean-shaven control of her Imperator uniform, the engine-black grease slick and dark around her eyes. 

“Furiosa,” Mari murmurs. “What are you thinking, my girl?”

“Need a haircut,” she mumbles, and then she’s choking on wet laughter, as surprised by her own reaction as everyone else. 

The old Vuvalini chuckles. “A haircut made in times of emotional distress is always regretted. Trust me on this one.” She strokes the hair in question. “I’m so sorry. I should have been more tactful. I know it’s very hard to talk about these things.”

_Sunshine is the best disinfectant._

“Katie never came,” Furiosa makes herself say, her voice closed tight to a whisper. “I thought maybe someone would come.” But they didn’t. Not during the first three days, not in the first three hundred. The longer she waited, the more she began to understand the Citadel and its might, and eventually she realized that no one was ever coming. The Citadel was just too big, too insurmountable. If they were smart, they’d have given her up for dead. 

_You keep moving_. 

She’d been seventeen years old, and with the hubris of youth, she’d never actually believed _she_ would be the one left behind. 

“When you and your mother were taken, we knew what we were up against,” Mari says solemnly. “We were riding out to investigate the dust on the horizon: me, Amy, Ruha, Katie, your mother and you. We’d seen them.” 

Memory comes flooding back, of being on the back of her mother’s bike, of her mother’s hair, sun-bleached and escaping from her crown of braids to tickle Furiosa’s face as they rode. She didn’t have her own bike yet, but Charter promised she would, as soon as they found one to fix up. They’d been tracking the main raiding party, but they hadn’t seen the group that had splintered off until they came roaring over the rise -

“There was a huge argument,” Amy adds. Her knitting has gone still, the needles clenched tightly in her hands. “It was our little band against a strong raiding party, and we were hours from any backup. It would have been suicide to try and get you back.”

 _You keep moving_. How many times had Katie drilled that into her? Rifles only work on long-range targets. If your target gets too close, you’re dead. If you lose your bike, you’re dead. If you get separated from the group, you’re dead. And if any of the group falls behind, you keep moving. You have to. 

They wouldn’t have gone straight back to the Green Place. They would have gone in another direction, to throw off any pursuers. They would have stayed out a day longer than necessary; only when they were absolutely sure they weren’t being followed, they would have fanged it back home. 

Except Katie’s not here. Katie didn’t come find her, and she wasn’t with the last of the Vuvalini, and she’s not here now. If anyone could survive the death of the Green Place, it was Katete Concannon, deadly shot and ruthless pragmatist. She’d grinned in the face of any hardship: _girl, nothing kills you unless you let it, don’t forget-_

“Katie,” Furiosa breathes, and the name hitches in her throat, pain like a shattered rib nudging against her lungs. “Katie tried-”

“Didn’t make it half a klick,” Amy says quietly. “They snapped her right off her bike. That was when we knew we had no chance.” 

It feels like a popped joint, like a knuckle stretched until it cracks, a painful release. All this time, she’s been wondering, part of her wailing like an abandoned child, an imagined betrayal burning in her gut-

It’s been festering inside her like a cancer. She’s been telling herself she’s avoiding the remaining Vuvalini out of guilt, but there’s still a hot coal of anger, the furious hurt of seven thousand days lingering beneath her skin. 

“We couldn’t have gotten to you,” Mari admits. “They had rifles. We’re better shots, but their vehicles were bigger. They had cover and we didn’t. Our only advantage was speed. We had to run.” Her eyes are red and damp. 

“I know,” says Furiosa, because she _does_. 

On the third day, her mother died, but on the first day, Katie had died trying to get to them, and Furiosa hadn’t known. She hadn’t known, and now she does, and she can only lean against Mari’s shoulder, boneless with an exhausted grief. She thinks maybe she’ll cry, but there’s only a strange emptiness. 

Mari smoothes her hair and rocks her like she did when she was little. “You are one of us,” she murmurs against Furiosa’s head. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry, my girl.”

“ _I’m_ so sorry.” It comes out as a croak. “If we hadn’t turned around-”

“We chose to come here,” Mari says firmly. “If we hadn’t turned around, maybe we’d have died on the salt. We’re here, and we’re alive.” Her arms tighten around Furiosa. “We remember our lost sisters and mothers, and honor their sacrifice by moving forward with our lives. That’s what we’ve always done. It’s what we’ll always do.”

She wants to protest. She knows she has to keep moving, but somehow it feels like giving up. The hurt is so deep and ragged, she can’t envision a future where the Valkyrie-sized hole in her heart isn’t raw and bleeding. 

“It’ll come, my girl,” Mari murmurs, as if she can see dark shapes of Furiosa’s guilt. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’ll come.”


	77. Chapter 77

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I want to give a shout out to the wonderful [Lisapoo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisapoo) for volunteering to nitpick this giant messy project of mine. I am incredibly flattered, and can't possibly thank you enough. For everyone else, this means that as time permits, I'll be going back through earlier chapters and correcting mistakes. (I'll make a note if I need to change anything structural; typos are grave sins and will be banished from memory.)

Furiosa is a wrecker in the shape of a person. She’s single-handedly driven into the girls’ cozy evening and turned it into a battle, dropping caltrops and sending everyone careening out of the way. Cheedo is curled hard against Dag, her face damp with tears, and all four of them look stricken, Capable’s face crumpled in sympathy. 

Amy puts her knitting down and comes to settle in on Furiosa’s other side, her and Mari forming a protective Vuvalini blanket with the circle of their arms.

She’s ruined everything. The girls look _horrified_ , and Furiosa has once again proven herself to be poison. She’s worse than Gastown, because Gastown doesn’t move; she kills as she walks, her toxic aura wafting around her as she goes. She’s vacillating wildly between a desperate, childlike urge to stay snuggled between her Vuvalini mothers, and the aching reality that she’s done enough damage, and she should leave before she says or does anything worse.

She needs to get out of here. She needs to _go_ -

At that moment, there’s a knock at the doorframe, and Keno pokes his head in. “Hey, Capable, if you’ve got a sec-” His whole body goes still as he registers the scene: the girls on one side of the room, tearstained and huddled together, and Mari and Amy pressed against Furiosa. “Oh. _Oh._ Um?” He looks wildly to Capable for help. 

“Can it wait?” she asks, her voice calm despite the redness of her eyes.

He looks like he’s not sure whether to intervene or get the hell out. “Yeah,” he says, sounding strangled. “Um. Definitely.”

“I’ll come find you,” Capable says firmly. At his wordless question, she shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’ll just - I’ll come find you.” 

He nods with false enthusiasm, and quickly retreats. 

Furiosa takes the moment to slip from the Vuvalini embrace and stagger to her feet. Her ankle is throbbing, and she can feel a headache starting to boil behind her eyes. “I should...”

They’re all staring at her, each face carrying a unique mix of pity, apprehension and pain. They look to her for strength, for leadership, for protection, and to have them regard her like this is deeply, agonizingly uncomfortable. How will they trust her the next time she has to fight? 

The War Boys have been jumpy around her because she’d - apparently - spiked Atrox’s head onto the front grill of the rig. The women are looking at her as if she’s an injured animal trying to bite them, and despite herself, that’s what she _is_. She’s lost her heavy mechanical center; now, she’s smoking like an oil tank, and everyone is treating her with understandable caution, unsure of when she’s going to explode. 

She is a bomb. Toast said Furiosa had a place here, but if she’s too dangerous, perhaps it would be better for everyone if she just left-

Mari gets up, rubbing a fist into a stiff hip. “You know you’re free to come and go as you’d like,” she says gently, “but you’re welcome to stay.”

She’s suddenly turned into Max, unable to express the storm inside her head. 

“And you _don’t_ ,” Capable adds fiercely, “get to put words in our mouths.”

Furiosa blinks. She doesn’t think she’s-

“I have eyes,” Capable continues, and she puts down her pencil. “You’re looking at us like we’re not allowed to see you this way, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You think you’re the only one who wanted to be rescued?” she asks. “The only one who’s been hurt?”

Her throat is too tight to speak, so she just shakes her head. It’s not the same. Being rescued isn’t even the issue. They haven’t done what she’s done. Their hands are relatively clean, and hers, hers is-

Hers is shaking. She’s gone cold and damp, her heart pounding in her head. She’s skirting the edge of another panic attack - or maybe it’s just another wave of the same one - and her mouth is sour with bile. 

All of a sudden, she’s exhausted down to her bones, and she just wants to curl up against Max and bury her head in his jacket. She doesn’t know who she is anymore, and somehow, he’s the only person who can quiet her internal screaming. 

Capable’s still looking at her, glowing darkly and waiting for an answer, but Mari puts one hand on Furiosa’s arm. “The world wasn’t broken in a single day,” the old Vuvalini says quietly. “It won’t be healed in a single night.”

Her vision blurs, hot and aching. 

She’s not sure if she says anything, if she’s even capable of speech. Capable get up and hugs her, all hard angles and swallowed hurt, and then somehow, Mari is gently steering Furiosa down the corridor and up to the door of her room. 

“I’m sorry,” she tries to say, numb fingers punching at the door sequence. “I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t mean to upset them-”

Mari just looks up at her, her brown eyes tired and sympathetic and sad. “You know how to fight, Furiosa. This is something worth fighting.”

The door clicks open, and she hugs herself. “I know, I just…” She’s fighting herself, and it’s spilling over into her interactions with others. She’s fighting _everyone_ , and she doesn’t mean to.

“Come back tomorrow,” Mari says. “That’s what you do. It might take a week, or it might take a thousand years. We keep moving.” She pats Furiosa’s cheek. “And it wouldn’t hurt to apologize a bit. The girls mean well. You had no cause to yell.” 

She feels herself wilt a bit, and Mari chuckles and gives her a gentle shove. “Sleep, girl. You’ll feel better. Dry your eyes and get some of that famous steel back in your spine. You’ll be all right.”

Mari makes it sound so easy. Furiosa wonders if somehow, she’s making it too hard. 

****

She doesn’t expect it to be a good night, not after laying all her past deeds out for the others to inspect, and she isn’t wrong. Max is enjoying the exhausted sleep of the recently-injured, and eventually, Furiosa crawls out of bed and sets herself up at her desk chair, tilting it back against the wall just enough so that when she starts to thrash, she’s knocked off-balance enough to wake up before she screams. 

It’s not exactly restful. 

The next day, she retreats to the garage and throws herself into repairs. Max eventually comes down, offering taciturn, one-handed assistance. He’s healing well, but he’s still hurting, and she can see his twitchy impatience with the sling Mari insists he wear. 

She has every intention of avoiding the girls, but somehow Mari finds her and despite a flash flood of panic and protest, Furiosa ends up back in the room near the Milk Mothers - the Salon, as Toast has smirkingly christened it - after the evening meal. 

Mari plops her down in the pile of pillows, and then joins Amy to discuss the knitted blanket like nothing is amiss. Toast gets up and pointedly moves closer to Cheedo, who gives Furiosa a furtive glance. Capable glowers at her ledger and doesn’t look up. 

Only Dag seems unperturbed, a worn fluid mechanics textbook balanced in her lap. “Trying to improve our irrigation,” she says, waving one hand at the pages. “The secret is that water keeps trying to flow downhill.”

Furiosa swallows hard against the lump in her throat. “I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m not- I shouldn’t have said what I did. You don’t deserve that.” She’s not wearing her prosthesis, so she picks at the hem of her shirt, trembling energy desperate for an outlet. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Mari nods to herself, and then raises an eyebrow at the girls. 

“You don’t get to yell at us just because you’re freaking out,” Toast says sullenly. 

That’s exactly the point, and exactly why she’s been keeping herself away from people. It should be obvious, and it feels like Toast is being deliberately cruel. Furiosa takes a deep breath, clenching her teeth against an agonized howl. “I know. I shouldn’t. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I...” She swallows hard again, and forces out, “I can’t promise it won’t happen again.”

She doesn’t know what’s happening. She feels hot and shivery all at once, like she’s running a fever, but her skin is cool to the touch. She pulls a pillow into her lap, worrying at the thick linen stitching. 

“Is it because you were a Wife?” Cheedo asks, her voice small. “Or is it something else?”

It’s a vehicle learning how to be human. She’s never given birth, but it can’t possibly hurt as much as this.

“She didn’t have Miss Giddy,” Toast says, as if she’s just realizing. “Miss Giddy said Joe brought her in to help us.”

“She said before, there was fighting.” Dag looks up, sucking on a loop of hair. “We weren’t always sisters, but she said it was better if we were.”

Capable finally looks up from her paper. “She kept telling us there was no shame in what Joe made us do. Angharad said he was the one who should be ashamed.” She frowns, and finally looks over at Furiosa. “You didn’t have any more choice than we did.”

That’s not true. She chose to fight hard, she chose to make herself noticed, she chose to be the sort of War Boy who was made an Imperator. Her throat closes up and she has just enough time to feel a stab of exhausted frustration-

“You missed a perl,” says Mari abruptly, poking at the baby blanket. 

“You’re missing your eyes,” Amy retorts, unconcerned. “Knit it your own damn self. Capable, how is the draft coming?”

Capable blinks. “It’s coming. We’re still working on the language for the produce exchange.”

The conversation veers away into vegetables and trade, and Furiosa slumps back into her pillow nest, shaking and drenched in sweat. She spends the rest of the evening concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply, the pillow clutched to her chest. 

When she finally slides under the blankets next to Max, he mumbles in his sleep and absently nuzzles against her shoulder. 

Somehow, the rasp of his stubble on her bare skin is a sweet, cleansing pain. 

****

It takes Capable and the Council the better part of eight days to draft a counter-proposal. Furiosa spends most of her time in the garages, and an agonizing few hours every night curled up in the pillows of the Salon, re-learning how to be a person. Max occasionally joins her, but he seems to be taking full advantage of the Citadel’s safety to sleep whenever possible, and almost as soon as they’re seated, his head rolls onto her shoulder and he’s out. 

Mari isn’t wrong; it’s getting easier, but it’s exhausting. She remembers feeling deeply uncomfortable in the vault, but she doesn’t remember being this drained. Maybe the girls are happier now that Joe is gone, so they talk more. 

Something that looks so simple shouldn’t be so hard. She wants to scream in frustration, but she just sets her jaw and muscles through. 

_We keep moving_.

She goes to bed every night beside Max. It’s not quite peace, but...it’s something. 

****

Furiosa and Max are at this point well-versed in each other’s nightmares. Violence is the risk of sharing a bed, and after almost forty days, they’re well past tallying up the bruises. 

“Some of the blackthumbs,” he says one morning, inspecting a split lip in her little shard of mirror. “This’ll keep ‘em talking.”

“They think we’re fucking,” she says, and is entirely unprepared for the way her whole body flushes at the admission.

He huffs a laugh, but she swears his ears turn a little pink themselves. “People talk,” he says. “Always do.”

“Does it bother you? What they think?” 

He grunts. “No.” His gaze abruptly trips away from her. “Just. What _you_ think.”

They’re suddenly talking about the night before Gastown.

She’s been expecting this for _days_ \- dreading it, anticipating it, aching for it - but Mothers, she is still so unprepared. 

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence. “I...don’t know what I think,” she admits, mouth gone dry, and then as his shoulders give the barest twitch of disappoint, she fangs it. “Except I’m not - not against it, I just - I don’t know. It’s _you_ ,” she tries to say, which is wrong the way it comes out, like he’s the problem and not the solution. “And I can’t…”

He’s turned from the mirror, waiting for her to make sense. He’s holding himself like he’s prepared for a blow, and that is _not_ what she wants from this. Max is…

Max is four warning shots into the sand instead of one shot into her head. He’s a wasteland kindness, all the more precious for being so unexpected, so contrary to what she’s experienced in her life.

Those four shots were more mercy than she’d been shown- 

She’s hugging herself, her naked stump cradled against her chest, trying to explain something she doesn’t quite grasp herself. She’s failing at it, which is appropriate, because this is grace she doesn’t deserve, and if she’s felt it once, she should just count it as a miracle and move on. And anyway, it’s a hazy memory, as if the world decided to take back that moment, as if she doesn’t deserve to even remember the languid joy of being spread apart in his hands. 

“The concussion,” she says desperately, feeling the helplessness creeping up into her throat. She waves a hand. “I lost some time, it’s all just fragments, I wasn’t sure-”

His eyes go wide. “You, mm. Couldn’t remember…?”

She shrugs helplessly. “It’s...all mixed up.”

He’s working through the gears in his mind, processing. “You thought...”

“It’s not always nightmares,” Furiosa says defensively, and feels the prickly heat of embarrassment from her toes to her scalp. “I didn’t want to pressure you. Not if it was something I’d imagined.”

“ _You_ ,” Max says, and the word comes out in a burst of relief and no small amount of hysteria. He scrubs at his hair. “‘S not pressure. It _wasn’t_ imagined.” He suddenly looks wild. “Unless it’s... _unwelcome_ -”

“It’s not,” she says quickly. “It’s not unwelcome.” 

War Boys trade paint. It looks so easy, a simple assignation for fluid exchange and the release of tension. Is it different because they’re half-lives, or is it different because Furiosa is only playacting at being a functional person?

It shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t be this hard to sit in a room full of women who want to share her company, and it shouldn’t be this hard to tell the person she trusts most in this world that she’d like him to touch her. 

How could she do this? Even a vehicle needs maintenance, someone to run their hands along the cables and rev the engine. They’ve spent almost every moment of the last fifty days in each other’s company, and they’re functional, consenting individuals; it was bound to happen. 

But that’s the part that sticks hardest in her mind: _was_ it bound to happen? She’d spent thousands of nights curled up with her fellow War Boys for warmth in the dank, dark caverns, and as an Imperator, she hadn’t hesitated to huddle up against chalk-white bodies when the desert wind got particularly cutting on a long night’s run. War Boys rubbed up against her, offering their bodies in other ways, but she’d shuddered, Joe’s diseased flesh springing immediately to mind, and declined. 

Sex is a vital part of human existence, and so it’s naturally a part of the Citadel, made into a tradeable commodity like everything else. She doesn’t have a gearstick, so she had no need of anyone to polish it, and it never occurred to any of the others that her female anatomy might have equivalent needs; she’s polished others often enough to achieve various ends, but not once has anyone ever offered or expected to reciprocate. 

Even if they’d offered, she wouldn’t have accepted. Just the thought of dusty, pawing hands makes her body clench and go distant. She’s defended herself with violence when she’s had to, and drawn an immutable line around herself, around the body that is is hers, isn’t Joe’s, isn’t _anyone’s_ , the body that is ultimately her only weapon against those around her. 

And then Max wasted four shots into the sand, when he could have just ended her. He gave her his blood and then his _name_ , and then he wrapped her in his jacket, and he’s _stayed_ -

He’s standing there in front of her, hunched into himself in the doorway to the bathroom alcove. He’s short and scarred and skittish, and warm and kind and gentle. He’s a warrior who heals without even trying. He helps others when he doesn’t have to. He’s stayed with her when she’s seen how badly he wants to run. 

She’s scared. They both are. That shouldn't be the stopping point, though; they’re both warriors, and they know how to work with fear. 

“Hey,” he says quietly. “We, mm. Don’t have to make any decisions right this second. Maybe let it sit awhile?”

That feels too much like relief. She cups the back of his head and pulls his forehead against hers. “Fool,” she mutters. She doesn’t deserve his patience, but she’s so, so grateful for it. 

His lips twitch in a smile. “Max.”


	78. Chapter 78

The draft is finished. Capable has the Pups in charge of the mirrors signal Gastown. A delivery schedule hasn’t been agreed on, but it’s been sixteen days, and Furiosa is sure that the Actuary is biting his nails about the water levels, unless he’s determined nail-biting to be _inefficient_. The mist has been thicker in the mornings, the sun sinking lower in the sky toward its winter solstice, so Gastown’s moisture collectors have been able to supplement the Citadel’s last delivery. 

It’s been sixty-seven days since the coup, and forty-eight days since the siege. 

The lookouts have noticed Buzzards hovering on the horizon in recent days, so the decision is made to make the run with as full a convoy as can be mustered. There are seven War Pups who made it through the siege to earn their grease, and even though they’re far too young to be War Boys, Furiosa still stands in front of them in her Imperator’s black, Ace at her side, and hears their oaths. Ello and the others greet their new crewmates with the customary headbumps, but it doesn’t feel like a celebration. Not like it used to be. 

“They’re just _kids_ ,” Toast says afterwards, scowling.

Ace grunts. “They need this as much as we do. Can’t spend your whole life being told you’re destined for one thing, then yank it away.” 

Furiosa knows exactly how that feels, even if she’s the one doing the yanking. 

The War Boys get the tanker loaded up with water, and guzzoline is rationed between the rig and its five escorts. Two of the escorts are proper cars, cobbled together from various scrap and salvage; the other three are pursuit bikes. The Bullet Farm has yet to answer any signal at all, so the vehicles bristle with freshly-made thundersticks, scavenged ammunition carefully counted and hoarded in the rig’s main cabin for Furiosa’s rifle. 

Ace raises his eyebrows at Max, eyeing the sling. “Gonna drive with that on?”

Max grunts, and flexes his good arm. “Left-hand drive. S’okay.”

They glower at each other, two battered warriors sullen in recovery and still suspicious of the other’s intentions, and Furiosa feels a sudden flush of warmth, a bubbling affection that seems to come out of nowhere and brings with it a sharp, choking laugh. 

She tries to disguise it as a cough, but that doesn’t work; Max and Ace are staring at her, twin expressions of mingled concern and confusion. “The both of you,” she tries to explain, but she’s laughing, she’s actually _laughing_ , and it’s been so long that her face feels foreign.

Ace rolls his eyes and and limps away, but Max’s lips twitch. “‘S good,” he says, quirking a smile. “That sound.” 

She leans into him, suddenly needing the heat of his body against hers, and lightly bumps his forehead. She can feel his breath on her lips, and wildly, she thinks that she’d like to kiss him. 

Later, maybe, when they’re alone. For a brief moment, his eyes burn with promise. 

It feels like hope. 

The vehicles have been washed and polished, each glowing steel-gray; there hasn’t been enough time to test and modify the two new cars, but the blackthumbs have done their best to make them distinct, to make them beautiful. They’re simple machines right now, but well-made, each weld precise and deliberate. In time, they will develop personality and quirks, their drivers adding power and decoration. 

Max frets. She can see him doing it. He’s gone under the rig three times now to check the brake lines, and as he commandeers a crawler to do it again, she gently touches his shoulder. “What’s on your mind?” Something clearly is. 

He scrubs a hand through his hair. “It’s, mm. Probably nothing.” 

Furiosa jerks her chin toward the corridor. “Want to talk?”

He shakes his head. “‘S fine.”

As the War Boys are doing their final checks, Max hard on their heels, Dag emerges from the shadows. She looks like someone’s story of a forgotten goddess: baggy pants slung low under her little belly and tucked into her boots, a loose sweater, bones and sticks and leaves woven into her crown of braids, and a length of the Wives’ white linen, smudged with dirt, wound around her shoulders and head to keep off the sun. She has a large earthenware bowl in her hands, full of some kind of gray-green paste.

Dag so rarely comes down from the gardens that even seeing her is a bit of a shock. She is standing expectantly, one eyebrow raised, and everyone just kind of stops, waiting to see what she’ll say. 

She raises the bowl. “For the journey.” 

Ello opens his mouth like he’s going to ask what they’re all thinking - _do we eat it, is it medicine, is it trade_ \- but then Dag moves over to the rig. Scooping out a handful of the paste, she wipes three confident vertical stripes down the driver’s door, and then does the same on the passenger’s side. 

It’s pigment, prepared with oil and water the same way the War Boys prepare their chalk. It’s pale green, but it glows against the metal, and just as the symbolism of the stripes sinks in, Dag is standing in front of Furiosa. “Remember who you are,” she says, and before Furiosa can react, Dag swipes three fingers down the middle of Furiosa’s forehead. 

Three stripes of green on the black Imperator grease: one stripe for each tower of the Citadel, done in green for the Green Place she’d left behind and for the Green Place she’s working to make. 

She’s momentarily paralyzed by the enormity of it. 

“ _Oh_ ,” breathes Toast. “Dag, that’s…that’s brilliant.”

“I’m not here to take your identity from you,” Dag announces to the room. “I’m not here to tell you to throw away the things you’ve been taught. The Vuvalini say you make yourself in layers, like soil.” She looks around. “The richest soil is called mulch. It’s a mixture of many different things, old and new. I know people, and I’m coming to know soil, and they’re the same.”

The room is momentarily silent, and then Toast breaks free, tripping forward to her sister. “Paint me,” she says, lifting her haphazard fringe of bangs. “Paint me like you did Furiosa.”

And suddenly, the stillness is broken. The newly-minted War Boys crowd behind Toast for their turn under Dag’s hand, the older ones hesitating. They look at each other, unsure. 

“Oh, for...” Ace uncurls from his position by the rig’s bumper. He stalks over to Dag and presents his forehead. “All on the same side here,” he grumbles. “Don’t need more paint to show it, but fuck it.”

Her lips twitch. 

That breaks the stalemate. The other War Boys line up, shamed into action. Finally, only Max is left. 

Dag gives him a look, and he blinks, as if he somehow assumed he was invisible, or wasn’t part of the ceremony. “Hm?”

“You’re one of us,” she says, as if explaining to a particularly slow child. “Schlanger.” The last word is snorted, with affectionate exasperation. 

“Mm. Okay, then.” He accepts the three green stripes, twitching and blinking as if the cool, damp feel of the paste is wholly unexpected. 

He looks oddly bewildered. 

Dag surveys the room, nods to herself in satisfaction, and then seems to shrink. “Um...good luck?” And then she’s gone like an eclipse, transient and ephemeral. 

“That’s so...shine,” Riz says, gingerly putting one finger to the drying paste on the rig’s door. “The color. Like produce!” 

Furiosa meets Max’s eyes. “Green,” she says, still feeling shaky and a little overwhelmed. 

He nods. 

“Load up!” bellows Ace. “Daylight’s burnin’, and we got Aqua-Cola to haul!”

“Water,” mutters Toast. “It’s fucking water.”


	79. Chapter 79

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lovelies, I am so so so sorry for the delay. I'm posting this short little chapter as an apology; it's super tiny, but I know it's been two weeks, and I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten about you. I promise I haven't given up on this fic - I've just got some recurring health stuff that's knocked me on my ass a bit, and put the creative brainmeats out of commission for a little while. I'm working to get back on my feet ASAP.
> 
> In the meantime, have the tinest chapter ever.

Max has never ridden in a trading convoy, and having the other vehicles so close is nerve-wracking. The cars are spiky with lances and nervous War Boys, the bikes hovering protectively near the tanker. It’s going to take more than a few stripes of green paint to convince his lizard brain that white-chalked bodies are not an immediate threat, but for the moment, that’s not the most pressing matter on his mind. 

Glory is back. 

He first noticed her two days ago, sitting in the shadows of Furiosa’s room. She’d been humming to herself and playing a game of knucklebones. He’d frozen in place, conditioned to her presence as a harbinger of disaster, but she’d ignored him completely. Furiosa had sleepily reached out, tugging him back to bed, and when he’d looked again, the ghost girl was gone. 

Since then, he’s been on edge, and she’s skirted the periphery of his vision, dancing out of sight just as he turns his head. He’s cognizant of his demons enough to recognize that there have been many instances where his hallucinations have helped him out - his subconscious recognizing the rumble of an engine before he can consciously process it, perhaps - and Glory’s sudden reappearance is maddening, especially since he can’t seem to find any credible threat. 

He doesn’t know what her triggers are. She and the old Vuvalini kept him alive when he was on the run from the War Party, and they’d rousted him during the worst of Furiosa’s dark moments. They hadn’t protected him from Atrox - perhaps they hadn’t had time? - and he doesn’t know what Glory is insinuating now. 

She’s not talking to him. She hasn’t said a word; if she makes any sound, it’s an quiet, wordless song, the idle noise of a happy child. She doesn’t make eye contact with him, doesn’t even give any indication she knows he’s there. 

Briefly, he wonders if _he_ was the one who’d died, and had somehow become the ghost lurking in _Glory’s_ mind. 

He tells himself panic won’t help. He can only try to be as prepared as possible, and since he doesn’t know what’s coming, that means preparing for _everything_. 

He triple-checks everything on the rig and hoards ammunition in his pockets. 

Unless....unless what’s coming is _nothing_ , and Glory is just a symptom of the inevitable insanity, creeping back toward him like a burgeoning sandstorm. If that’s the case, he needs to _go_ , to get away while he still has his wits about him. Furiosa can’t see him like this; he’s watched her slowly come unclenched over the last few weeks, tentatively furling out like a spiny desert flower, and he can’t burden her with his madness. He can’t, because he knows she’d break herself trying to bear his weight along with her own. He can’t, because she leans against him as if tasting his breath, and every nerve in his body deliriously shrills with the contact. 

He _can’t_ , because he-

He’s been in the Wasteland long enough that he’d thought himself made sexless. He’s not the sort of man who gets off on his own power, and he’s been weak often enough that he isn’t attracted to overt displays of strength. In any other situation, Furiosa would be a warlord; that fact is immutable and uncontested. He’s known any number of people like her, but she’s the first to draw him in, the first to override his urge to run. She is powerful and terrifying, and she could kill him without regret, but she’d given him the kill sequence not half an hour after he’d stolen her rig. Somehow, without any obvious conversion, she’d folded him into her escape, and then he’d found himself willingly handing her a loaded rifle. 

This is how she’s survived all these years: she has an uncanny ability to read people, to work with them, to get them on her side. He’d been racing into the salt flats before he’d realized what he was doing. 

Now, she’s sitting beside him, her rifle at ready and the three stripes down her forehead bringing out the brilliant green of her eyes. She is fierce and beautiful and strong, and on a moment’s notice, he can compose a very lengthy list as to why he should stay away from her.

(The other list, the list of reasons as to why he _hasn’t_ stayed away from her, is very short. It only contains three words, but they are immeasurably powerful and inexplicably supercede all sense and reason: he just can’t.)

“Hey,” Furiosa says, leaning toward him. “Fool.” 

He starts a little. 

“You all right?” She’s looking at him with concern, her face as broad and open as the road under his tires. 

He grunts. Glory is nowhere to be seen, but he can _feel_ her, a prickling on the back of his neck, and every nerve in his body is screaming with imminent danger, but he can’t seem to form the words to tell Furiosa.


	80. Chapter 80

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my lovelies, you are all the best. I'm working my way back to what-passes-around-here-for-normal. (By the way, if you've ever suffered from mental health issues, make sure your doc tests your vitamin B12 level. Mine was apparently ridiculously low, and after being on some high-octane supplements for a few days, I'm starting to feel and behave like a human again.) 
> 
> In the meantime, further cementing my belief that we are craftiest and most talented fandom, HOLY CRAP THERE IS GORGEOUS ART! You are so awesome, and I just want to scream at how fantastic your art is:
> 
> Weirywolf drew [a brooding and beautiful Furiosa, and some heartbreaking Max/Furiosa cuddles](http://weirywolf.tumblr.com/post/130165753949/someone-mentioned-halsey-in-relation-to-the-length).  
> Threnody Catkins drew [a mind-blowingly cool "forgotten goddess" Dag](http://threnodycatkins.tumblr.com/post/130646236226/pencil-drawing-of-the-dagabbey-lee-as).

They make it to Gastown unmolested, all people and vehicles intact, and the new sigil gets noticed immediately. From his vantage point in the driver’s seat, Max sees Gastown citizens pointing and gesturing with three wondering fingers. Green isn’t a color common to the Wasteland, and there is no doubt as to its meaning. Gastown War Boys, anonymous beneath brutal and sulfur-yellow wrappings, surround the convoy as it eases through the crowd. 

Glory skips along with them, always just on the edge of his vision. Sometimes she’s wearing one of the heavy Gastown masks, sometimes she’s just wound a piece of cloth around her face; he always knows it’s her by the cheerful bounce of her dark hair.

He can feel his heartbeat in the meat of his tongue. 

Furiosa reaches over and briefly lays her prosthetic hand on his knee. Outside of a fight, she doesn’t use that arm for touching, but she has her human finger on her rifle’s trigger, and somehow, even feeling the cold brush of metal through the fabric of his trousers is calming.

He drops the engine into first gear and creeps through Gastown, Miro’s thick-wheeled hatchback up front and Riz driving the modified wagon behind. The two motorcycles buzz nervously, bringing up the rear. Their Gastown escorts lead them to the main garage, and before the engines are even cut, Furiosa hands Max her rifle and drops down out of the cab. 

The Actuary is waiting in the dim garage light, the same immaculate black suit and rigid posture. “Imperator,” he says.

“I’m here as an emissary for the Citadel Council,” she says, holding out a small bundle of yellowed notebook paper. “They offer a counter-proposal.”

He inclines his head, inspecting Capable’s neat handwriting. “There was an eighty-three percent chance your Council would reject our terms. The fact that you are here indicates their unwillingness to heed my warnings. ”

“They prefer not to have their decisions dictated to them,” she retorts. 

Max watches the Actuary, and realizes that one of the reasons the man is distinctly unnerving is because he doesn’t appear to have any hair. There is only a thin, pale fringe at his eyelids, but nothing where his eyebrows should be, indicating that the decision is entirely aesthetic. It makes him almost impossible to read.

He’s also regarding Furiosa with the flat gaze of a goanna. “That is not unexpected,” the Actuary says. “According to my tables, there was only a forty-five percent probability they would choose not to retain you, although I will admit that based on your past actions, I had predicted an ninety-six percent probability that you would take over leadership yourself.” He pauses a moment, eyes raised to the ceiling in calculation. “Although I have no proof that the Council itself isn’t a mere fabrication, your reputation is that you are efficient and direct. There is a ninety-eight percent probability that if you had taken control of the Citadel, you would find it unnecessary to claim such a council existed.” 

“The Council shares your confidence in my abilities,” Furiosa says coolly. 

He frowns. “You should know that my tables strongly supported your victory against Atrox. Your ruthlessness is also well-known. I admit, the uncertainty involved with an Atrox-led Citadel would have introduced multiple uncertainties and would have been...undesirable.”

Wait. Is the Actuary saying he’s supporting the new Council? Glory’s presence presses hard against the back of Max’s eyes, and he’s having a hard time keeping this thoughts straight. 

“I do not have sufficient data on the Citadel Council to calculate accurate tables about them directly,” the Actuary continues. 

“Perhaps a visit would be in order. I’m sure the Council would receive you.” 

“Indeed.” The Actuary glances through the counter-proposal. “I’m sure you understand that I will need several hours to review this document.”

“We’ve brought water. We’re prepared to make the trade, and will welcome an envoy-”

He shakes his head, a sharp motion of denial. “There are no agreed-on terms for dealing with your significant water debt. If you wish to leave your payment here-”

“We did not request aid,” Furiosa snaps. “We have no debt. That agreement was between Joe and the People Eater, and they’re both dead.” She gestures to the sheaf of papers. “This is our proposal. Accept it, or you won’t see a single drop of Citadel water.”

“You knew you would be pursued. Product was expended. You are liable for the debt; we’ve discussed this before.”

“Gastown is just as complicit.” Max suddenly aches to be on the ground beside her, even if only to glower and lend some additional weight, but if he gets out of the rig, he’ll ruin the air of ironclad invulnerability she’s projecting. “Read the document. The Council is well aware of Gastown’s past abuses. Acknowledgement of those abuses is a requirement for trade.”

“Indeed?” One non-existent eyebrow arches, and he thumbs through the document. The corner of his mouth twitches. “This is…” The Actuary seems at a loss for words. “Your Council is made of children?” he finally asks. 

Furiosa bristles, but doesn’t deign to comment. 

“I only ask, because they seem incapable of understanding that this is the Wasteland.” He considers the document, and then shakes his head. “There is a particularly apt wordburger I’m compelled to repeat: to make an omelet, you must break a few eggs. Your Council cannot truly believe that Gastown would apologize for half of the acts of which you accuse us.”

“We’re not expecting an apology, but we will not be penalized. ” She folds her arms. “Those are our terms. If you don’t accept, we’ll take our water and go.” 

“Look around, Imperator. You are hardly in the position to be making threats.” The Actuary waves a hand to indicate the crowd of Gastown War Boys surrounding the convoy. They’re a faceless army, hidden behind masks and leathers and dusty yellow powder. They have flamers and saws, and Max counts so many well-stocked bandoliers there can be no doubt that the Bullet Farm is receiving its share of the petroleum wealth.

Meanwhile, the Citadel has twelve War Boys, and the bare handful of bullets Max and Furiosa have hidden in their pockets. The Actuary’s meaning is clear: if Furiosa tries to leave, Gastown is more than capable of taking the water by force. 

“Look at _me_ ,” she fires back. “What do your tables say about people who take things from me?”

Furiosa’s gone still, her body suddenly primed for violence. There is a dark energy about her, clotted and gnarled about her like a scar, and the awareness of it channels through Max’s body and straight to his groin with an unexpected jolt. She is so dangerous, but he _knows_ her, knows the smell of her, and even though the negotiations are teetering on a precipice and Glory is a featureless blur in the back of his skull, all he can focus on are the hard muscles of Furiosa’s thighs, the proud strength of her neck and shoulders. Even without ammunition and weaponry, she radiates power, and it takes the combined weight of the Actuary and his War Boys to even begin to counter her influence. With a single look, she can own this town and everyone in it, and absolutely everyone here knows. 

The lost War Boy, Nux, had described Immortan Joe as the one who had touched the sun. Max suddenly understands what that could mean, how it could feel to be that close to the infinite: Furiosa is an inferno in the shape of a person, and he remembers her beneath his fingers, slick and eager and blazing with heat. Even this morning, when she’d leaned against him, eyes dark and welcoming as a mythic jungle-

The Actuary feels her energy too, but it’s clearly having a different effect. He’s shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, drawing in a breath in an unconscious effort to appear bigger, more threatening. “I will consider the proposal,” he says flatly. “No trade will be conducted.”

Furiosa frowns. “We will not leave our tanker here unattended.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You doubt our security?”

She bares her teeth. “I protect what belongs to the Citadel.” 

“Indeed.” He waves a hand, and the majority of the assembled Gastown War Boys turn and clomp off to other duties. “If you choose to stay with the tanker, that’s your decision. I will return once my department has reviewed your proposed terms.”

“I hope they find them acceptable,” Furiosa says evenly, and even though _or else_ isn’t said, the Actuary huffs a little at the implied threat. 

“The numbers will determine our course of action,” he says. “In the meantime, understand that you cannot indulge in Gastown’s resources without incurring further debts.”

From somewhere on the side of the tanker, Max hears Ace make a disgusted noise, but Furiosa seems unsurprised. “We have our own provisions,” she says. “We wouldn’t want to trouble you with the burden of hospitality.”

Max chokes back an unexpected snort of fond amusement.

The Actuary looks like he’s swallowed something unpleasant, but he just inclines his head, tucking the sheaf of paper into the jacket of his flawless black suit. 

When he exits, Glory goes skipping behind him.


	81. Chapter 81

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, you have no idea how scared I was that I'd lost the thread of this story when I was feeling gross. I have no idea what muse I'm channelling, or what I owe her, but we're definitely back on track. 
> 
> *cracks knuckles*
> 
> Ohhh yesssss.

They’d all assumed the Actuary would need only a few hours to review the counter proposal, but the sun dips below the horizon, and there still has been no word. Furiosa confers with Ace, and he distributes food and water rations to the Citadel War Boys. “Don’t eat anything you’re offered,” Furiosa’s second instructs. “Don’t drink anything you didn’t bring yourself. Water’s poison here, food’s probably unsafe, and we don’t need you shitting your guts out in the middle of a fight.”

The newly-minted War Boys are wide-eyed, but the older ones - hardly any older, but suddenly the grizzled veterans - nod gravely. “Heard you can get took,” Riz adds dramatically, from his spot atop one of the tanker wheel wells. “They’ll put something in your tucker that knocks you out, and next thing you know, you’re on the spits yourself.”

One of the younger Boys giggles, a high-pitched quaver of incredulity. Ace rolls his eyes. “Won’t get drugged,” he mutters. “They’ll just conk you upside the head.”

Max stays in the cab, ready to gun the engine at a moment’s notice. He’s very familiar with the myriad meats offered in the Gastown markets, the savory odors that linger amid the acrid air and trigger mouths to water, even knowing full well the barbecue in question could easily be last night’s associate. 

He sips from his own canteen, gnawing absently at his bar of dried vegetable paste. It’s hardly enough to fill him, and he’s skirting the bright edge of hunger, rodent-twitchy and aware of every little noise and movement. He’s nowhere near tired, but Furiosa and Ace arrange some sort of watch schedule for the others, War Boys curling up behind tires and in the back of the two pursuit vehicles to sleep.

“Hey,” Furiosa says quietly, climbing back into the passenger seat. There’s a rough hitch in her breath from the noxious Gastown air. “Have you eaten?”

He grunts. “Had a bar. ‘M alright.”

She fishes around behind the seat and pulls out a thick Vuvalini blanket. When he wordlessly refuses the offer, she bundles it around her own shoulders, propping her feet up on the dashboard. She’s got a bar of her own, nibbling at the edges with a resigned expression. 

There is absolutely nothing fragile about her, but more than anything, Max wants to coddle her, to provide the gentleness she’s been missing. He wants to be the solid ground beneath her tires, the place she goes when she needs to gain momentum and traction. 

It scares him, how much he wants her, how badly he wants to be used by her. He thinks she could probably slice his throat, and he would be just grateful for the touch of her blade. 

So much for not putting down roots. He’s practically down to bedrock. 

He’s going to fuck this up so badly. The certainty buzzes in his ears, the dissonant whine of accusing voices. He’s not reliable, he’s not-

“I hate this,” Furiosa says quietly. 

He twitches, startled. “Mm?”

She’s staring out the windscreen, focused on somewhere beyond the dusty glass. “I’m not cut out for this.”

He hums. “Seem to be doing fine.”

“I need to protect our position,” she says, her voice rough with fatigue. “I can’t let him intimidate us, and I haven’t been able to bring him around. He’s not in a position to negotiate.”

Max shrugs. “Could be just about the numbers. He seems to live and die by these, mm, ‘tables’.”

She shakes her head. “This isn’t about his calculations. He’s too defensive. There’s something else going on.”

“Lot of ammunition on display. Could be Bullet Farm.”

“Has to be.” She presses two fingers against the bridge of her nose. “ _Fuck_. What am I missing? Atrox was the last of Joe’s leadership, and we don’t have any indication that someone other than the Actuary is controlling Gastown. We don’t know who took over for Kalashnikov, or how many of his generals survived. Given the lack of communication from the Bullet Farm, and all the ammunition we’re seeing here, I’m going to guess they’re not getting water from us for a reason.” 

Max grunts. “Think Gastown’s trading some water for bullets?”

She chews thoughtfully on a bite of vegetable protein. “Maybe.” Her eyes flick over at him. “We never had to negotiate with Gastown or the Bullet Farm before. We’d just go. It was a supply run. Bartertown...Bartertown was different. The Imperator is trusted to make profitable trades.” She doesn’t say what those trades involved, but her face goes blank, and in his gut he knows. He’s been to Bartertown. He knows what people will do for fresh, clean water. 

“Hey,” he says, almost desperate, because he can feel the sudden change in the atmosphere, the electric charge of her grief and shame in the moment before it explodes. 

“Women,” she says hoarsely, the words tumbling out. “Girls. I bought them, for Joe. I bought-”

Max makes a noise that’s half-protest, half painful sympathy. 

“Cheedo was the last one from Bartertown.” Furiosa worries at the half-eaten bar with her human hand. “Her family...they were happy to trade her, and she was so excited to go…”

If the rig had a bench seat, he’d be pressed up against her, but it doesn’t; there’s the gearshift between them, and tools and bottles of water. He’s not good with words, especially when it comes to Furiosa. He’s still haunted by the sharp, vulnerable anger in her face when he’d told her hope was a mistake.

It hadn’t been what he’d meant. Not at all. Not when she’s the closest thing to hope he’s ever seen.

So he just hums quietly, because that seems to work, and he sees her eyes slide closed for a moment as she collects herself. When she looks back at him, she’s calm again, but weighed down with a tired sadness. “I owe them success,” she says. “All of them.”

“‘S a long drive,” he reminds her gently. “Not something done in a day.”

“I know.” She’s quiet awhile, finishing her bar and delicately dabbing up crumbs with a finger. She untucks her prosthetic from the Vuvalini blanket and reaches over to him. He meets her halfway, human fingers tangling up in their metal analog, and then sliding up to where the prosthetic cups her stump. She’s too uneasy with Gastown and the trade situation to risk taking off the prosthetic, heavy though it is, so he runs the pads of his fingers over her exposed skin, gently massaging where he can. She makes a low groan of appreciation, and it sends warm shivers through his belly. 

He wants to touch her more than this. He wants to be as close as she’ll let him, to put his mouth on her brand, on her scars, on the parts of her that have been starving for kindness. He needs her to know her own vitality, needs to feel himself coming alive with her power. 

Judging by the rough uptick of her breathing, he’s pretty sure she’d be onboard. 

Outside the cab, one of the War Boys says something that causes the others to explode in uproarious laughter, and it startles both of them. Furiosa jerks upright, blinking in dazed confusion. Max shifts in his seat, tugging his trousers into a slightly less uncomfortable position, grateful his lower half is below the shadow of the dashboard. Ace hollers something indistinct from his perch atop the cab roof, and the Boys subside into quiet chuckles. 

Gastown is eerie at night. It’s not dark, but it has dark corners, the places where the flickering light of the oil flares can’t reach. Shadows bounce off the sulfur-washed walls and dance through the miasmic air. The garage is dim and stuffy, the lamp flames shivering with their own fumes. The Gastown War Boys on duty seem bored, polishing their guns and picking bits of detritus from the teeth of their saws. 

Glory is sitting on one of the upper catwalks, dangling her legs over the edge. She’s twisting a hank of her curly hair into a haphazard braid. 

Any sense of calm he’d had is abruptly vaporized. He’s missing something. Is it the Actuary? Is she trying to tell him the Actuary is dangerous? Is the trade convoy being played? _Tell me,_ he thinks, wishing for the power to shove his thoughts into the ghost girl’s head. 

Glory’s braid comes untwisted. She shakes it out and, biting her tongue, starts plaiting again. 

Max wants to scream. 

“Hey.” Furiosa’s looking at him expectantly. She’s going to say something else, but she catched his expression and frowns. “What’s wrong?”

There’s no way he can explain Glory without sounding crazy, so he doesn’t even try. “Nothing.”

“Like the nothing with the brakes earlier?” She raises one eyebrow. 

He makes himself shrug. “Just, mm. Jumpy.”

She lets out a breath. “Yeah. Me too.” She tucks herself into the blanket. “Are you going to stay up?” 

He nods. There’s no way he can sleep now, not with Glory kicking her feet on the edge of the catwalk. “You, mm. Get some rest.”

Glory was a child he’d known for less than a day, and her death had knocked him into the blur of madness until Furiosa coaxed him out. If he loses Furiosa-

He can’t. It’s not a thing to be contemplated. If it comes down to that - and it will; this is the Wasteland, and Max has no delusions - it is absolutely imperative that he goes first, because there cannot be a reality where Furiosa dies and Max does not. He’s lost everything in his life except his damned jacket, and he can’t - he _can’t_ -

“Fool,” whispers Furiosa, and she’s curled toward him in the passenger seat, her human hand reaching over to snag his. Her eyes are fond and sleepy, but her right iris is still stained a bit brown, a constant reminder of how close he’d come to losing her already. 

The truth of it all is suddenly too tight in his chest, the words he wants to say too large for his mouth. He wants to tell her that she’s the sun, that his blood has never done anything as important as flow through her veins. She thinks she’s a monster, but she’s the calm amid the storm. She’s broken in the same ways that he is, and he’s starting to understand that maybe, as her roots sink through his cracks, maybe he’s putting roots down into her as well. 

The way she looks at him, like he’s something she can’t believe, he thinks she’d probably take the sentiment in her hand and curl it toward her heart. 

“Max,” he manages. “It’s Max.” 

Her fingers tighten against his, lips quirking. “I know.”


	82. Chapter 82

He has every intention of letting her sleep, but his injured shoulder is aching from a lack of movement, and eventually, he has to go take a piss. He tries to be quiet, but the cab door needs more than a little grease, and she’s upright and gripping her rifle before he’s even on the ground. 

“S’okay,” he murmurs. “Just stretching a bit.”

“Need me with you?” She’s muzzy around the edges, but ready for blood.

He almost says yes. “No. Go back to sleep.”

“Mmkay.” And as if on command, she’s back under her blanket and boneless, as if her trust in him is so complete that she doesn’t even need to confirm things are all right. 

_Max._

_Where were you?_

_You said you’d save us, Max._

He stumbles to the shadow of the rig and holds himself with shaking hands as he pisses. He tries to breathe slowly, but the voices won’t fucking go away, and the cacophony inside his skull is deafening. 

He climbs back into the cab, a knot of anxiety hard in his chest. It presses into his lungs like a clot of Gastown air, and he whines to himself to try and loosen it. He pushes a thumb into his injured shoulder, and the jolt of pain makes everything haze into red. It works for a moment, and then he’s left shaking and sweating in the driver’s seat, sucking air between his teeth and trying not to whimper and wake Furiosa. 

_Max Rockatansky._

_Help us, Max._

She’s sleeping peacefully right beside him, and he can’t see anything wrong, not one fucking thing, but he can’t shake the feeling he’s doing something horrible, that there’s a storm brewing on the horizon and he’s helpless against its force. 

****

In the days after, Furiosa will spend hours analyzing that morning. If she’d known what would happen, would she have done anything differently? Could she have prevented it?

She twists it around in her mind, at first with the confidence of an experienced mechanic trying to suss out a piece of machinery, and later with an aching desperation, searching for meaning in a place that has none.

The worst part is that she can’t even blame herself. It’s not a moment of inattention or a lapse in judgement. She’s awake and aware, and it’s just not enough. 

And Max... 

Max lets her sleep through the night. She’d assumed he’d wake her, but when she finally opens her eyes, he’s just sitting there in the driver’s seat with a thousand-yard stare, nervously chewing on the skin around his thumb and bouncing a leg. The Gastown haze is faintly glowing with the promise of dawn. 

“Should’ve let me take watch,” she mumbles, and he’s so keyed up, he hits the roof of the cab and has his pistol pointed at her before he realizes who’s speaking. She raises her hands, her prosthetic straps biting painfully into her skin after wearing them all night. “It’s just me. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head jerkily, tucking the pistol back in his jacket. “Don’t be sorry. ‘M sorry. ‘S just, mm. Bad night.”

“Want to talk any?”

“No.” This, emphatically, and he fumbles with the door handle, lurching to the ground. It’s less an exit than it is an escape, and when he’s out of the rig, he just stands there, looking feral and tense.

Furiosa pulls the blanket back around her shoulders and staggers out after him, legs and back protesting from the cramped seat and neck _screaming_ from the pressure of the prosthetic all night. Her head is already pounding, and the sun’s not even up. 

Riz is polishing some nonexistent grit from one of the rig’s wheel wells, but one look at Max and then one look at Furiosa, and mutters something about needing to see about something in Miro’s vehicle. “You need anything, Boss?” he asks as he passes, face twisted with concern. “Want me to get the Ace?”

“Just give us a moment,” she says quietly, and he nods, ushering three of the newer War Boys out of earshot. 

Max is lurking by the front tire of the rig, radiating the sort of wild, stirred-up agony that makes her want pin him to the ground until he calms down, but she doesn’t trust at this moment that she won’t get shot. 

She still has to try. “When we get back to the Citadel - want to talk then?” He stares at her, and she’s not sure if it’s the concept of _back_ or _talk_ that’s causing the short-circuit, but he’s clearly not processing. 

“Max,” she says gently, and he jerks away as if she’s just brandished a live grenade instead of his own name. Carefully, she eases toward him, until she’s close enough to slip her human hand around to grip the hair at the back of his skull. “Hey there,” she murmurs, pulling his forehead against hers. 

He’s shaking, but he presses against her, eyes squeezed shut and hands gripping her arms. “This is me,” she reminds him quietly, her fingers firm against his scalp. “How many times have you held me up? Let me help you this once.”

A hard tremor shudders through him. “Fool,” Furiosa adds, and his huffed breath is warm and sour in her mouth. They’re almost touching; if she leaned over even an increment farther, her lips would be against his, and she thinks that if she were braver, she’d do it, open herself up and bite him, anything to shake him out of the state he’s in. He’s inside her, flowing through her veins, and she could give that back to him, could use her body as an anchor to keep him from lifting off into the void. 

Her heart is suddenly pounding in the back of her throat, and even though he’s right there - he’s _right there_ , damp with panic and desperate for any distraction - she can’t bring herself to do it. 

His eyes flick up to hers, and fuck, this is _Max_ , he needs something, and she licks her lips-

“Everything okay?” 

They are both so startled by Ace’s sudden appearance that Max _yelps_ and goes crashing into the side of the rig, and it’s only through her quick reflexes that she manages to knock his hand away before he goes for the gun in his jacket. 

Max is hanging onto sanity by a thread, and Furiosa is _blushing_ , gone prickly crimson to the roots of her hair. Ace stares at both of them, his lumpy countenance giving his expression a suspicious skew. 

“...we good here, Boss?” he finally asks. “Riz said something was up.”

Max is bent double, one arm curled protectively toward his injured shoulder, and Furiosa is burning with inexplicable embarrassment, and more than that, she’s _angry_. She’s absolutely furious that Ace is still looking at Max as if he’s nothing more than a wasteland feral, as if he hasn’t been instrumental in the rebuilding, as if he is a threat to Furiosa and not the one person who has looked right at her and not flinched away. 

Deliberately, she puts her human hand on Max’s head, and it’s as much a gesture of solidarity as it is of comfort. Max presses a little into her hand; Ace narrows his eyes. “We’re okay,” she says firmly.

Ace frowns, his eyes darting to the pistol still loosely held in Max’s hand. 

“I said it’s _fine_.” She gives him her best steely Imperator stare, daring him to contradict her, but he backs down, shaking his head and leaving them in peace. 

The moment is broken. Max is broken. He straightens and leans against the cab, white-faced and miserable. If they were back at the Citadel, she’d get a bike and drive them into the desert until there wasn’t another soul for miles, far enough away where he could just breathe. 

“You could go,” she says quietly. “I mean, I need to stay here, but you could take one of the bikes…”

It’s not something she wants to offer. She wants to stay with him. Even the thought of him leaving feels like being gutshot. 

He blinks, and she can tell by the stillness of his face that he’s actually considering it. “...no,” he finally mumbles. “Need a driver. Need an extra gun.” 

“I’ve run to Gastown a thousand times,” she reminds him. 

He shakes his head. “Not like this.” 

And somehow, in that moment, she thinks it’s settled. She feels reassured in a way she has no right to feel. On impulse - perhaps as an apology - she leans in and rests her forehead against his, and feels his eyelashes ghost against her cheeks as he breathes her breath. 

Later, she’ll look back and wonder at her own naivete. 

 

****

The sun is well overhead when the Actuary reappears. One of his sulfur-painted Imperators ushers Furiosa and Ace over to a nearby workbench, where two sheafs of paper are dropped amid the grease and metal shavings. 

“Your Council’s counter-proposal is accepted,” the Actuary says without preamble. “Your unsubtle threats indicate that further negotiation will be ineffective, and it is therefore most efficient for me to simply accept these unequal terms.” He gestures to the stack of notebook paper, to Capable’s familiar hand. “I’ve signed the terms you laid out, with the caveat that they be revisited in one hundred days, when your agricultural production should be back at capacity.” He gestures to the other stack. “I’ve also had a copy made for our records. You may confirm their accuracy, and then I will require your signature.”

She’s expecting a fight, so when there suddenly isn’t one, her body feels weightless, as if she’s in a vehicle that’s turned without inertia. Numbly, she pages through the Actuary’s copy of the document, biting the inside of her mouth to keep her lips from forming the words as she silently reads. All at once, her tenuous grasp of literacy is overwhelming, and she’s reduced to just comparing the shape of the words on each page to Capable’s, their meaning flitting past her eyes without sinking in. 

“I haven’t been given the authority to sign for the Council,” she says.

The Actuary’s face is blank, his eyes as flat and dark as the bitumen beneath their feet. “You are only certifying it is a correct copy. I would expect that your Council would agree to their own terms?”

Stung, she takes the Before-style pen and scribbles her name at the end of the document. As far as she can tell, it’s a very good facsimile, written on crisp yellowed paper in a black hand that almost exactly mimics Capable’s. 

“It is done,” the Actuary says. He raises a hand, and the assembled Gastown War Boys immediate jump to action. “You may conduct your trade and go.” He looks to Furiosa. “Tell your Council I expect to meet them when our terms expire.”

She nods. “I’m sure they will be eager to arrange it.”

He gives her one last inscrutable glance, as emotionless as a lizard, and tucks the pen into his spotless suit jacket. “Indeed.”

****

When she gives him the signal to start the engine, the wave of relief that shudders through his frame is so intense it’s almost orgasmic. Every breath of Gastown air sears his lungs, and every moment spent inside Gastown’s walls makes him feel more and more claustrophobic. 

Getting on the road is sweet release. He kicks the engine into its highest gear, and sets his sights on the Citadel. Miro’s bigwheel hatchback kicks up dust in front of them, the two bikes hanging back with Riz’s wagon. 

They’ve been driving for several long minutes before she speaks. “We did it,” Furiosa says quietly, and then she’s grinning at him, white teeth and dusty skin, an expression as wild and unfettered as the wind itself. 

Her cheeks are flushed with victory, and she suddenly stands, hoisting herself out of the top hatch and raising a fist in the air. She lets out a long, trilling cry that he’s sure bubbles up from her deepest Vuvalini self, and Max gets chills down his spine as it’s echoed by the War Party around him. He hums in agreement, but it’s an automatic response to her voice; she is suddenly mesmerizing, a wild desert warrior-goddess, her smile as rare and precious as the rain. He can’t look away. He’s sitting on fifteen hundred horsepower of dubiously-repaired war machine, there is guzzoline in their tank, the prospect of peace hanging between two towns, and Furiosa is riding shotgun, the engine roaring beneath them like the beginning of the world.

For a few, blessed moments, the voices in his skull have gone completely silent. 

Sliding back into her seat, she gives him a fond look, as if to say _the fuck are you staring for, fool_. 

He holds her gaze as long as he can, but it’s like looking at the sun, and eventually he has to break, but not without his face splitting into an unexpected grin, his skin cracking like the sunburnt ground. 

He sees Glory a split second before it happens. She’s standing in the middle of the road, dust swirling around her, her mouth open in a silent scream and tiny hand upturned-

Panic is already crashing over him, howling in his ears like a sandstorm from hell, and it takes everything he’s got not to black out right there. 

Miro’s car hits the first mine. The force of the explosion blows off the hood and sends the vehicle rolling. Furiosa screams and lunges for the wheel, but Max is already jerking hard to the left, the drive train shuddering as the rig goes into a skid. 

The safety of the Citadel is five minutes away, but it might as well be five years.


	83. Chapter 83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovelies, I'm spinning my wheels. I don't know how I've gone from posting once a day to barely getting a chapter done in a week, but it's _annoying_ , and I promise I'm working on getting back on track.
> 
> I'm also not super happy with this chapter, but I've been poking at it for three days, and at this point, I just need it to go away.

Everything is chaos. 

The rig is skidding hard, and there’s the shriek of metal as the tanker jackknifes. There are three thousand gallons of fresh guzzoline sloshing behind him, and a fireball blooming up ahead as Miro’s car tumbles end over end -

Both he and Furiosa are pulling hard on the wheel, the rig twitching and splintering beneath them, but they can’t control the skid. For a split second, Max is utterly certain this will be the end of him, and that is _not_ okay- 

Except that it’s not the end. The rig slides off the road, the front tires going down in soft sand. Before it’s even stopped moving, Furiosa is scrambling out of her window like a lizard, her rifle clenched in her metal hand. “Cut the engine!” she snaps. “Cut the electrical. Cut _everything_ , and get the fuck out!”

He’s already shutting it down and clambering out behind her. It takes almost nothing to start a fire, and if the tank is breached, they’ll be free-floating ash before they know what hit them. 

His heart is pounding hard in his chest as he drops to the ground, the impact stabbing up from his bad knee. The voices in his head are screaming, a mad chorus of dissonant shrieks that curdle the blood in his ears. His forehead is throbbing - a hit from the steering wheel? 

Furiosa is in front of him, gesturing wildly, but he can’t make out what she’s saying. He stares at her lips, uncomprehending, until she grabs his shoulder with her metal hand and rotates him away from the tanker. 

Riz’s modified wagon is idling anxiously at the end of a long set of skidmarks, thundersticks still trembling from the abrupt stop. The two motorcycles flank it, humming and ready for action. Beyond, shapes are bobbing across the dunes from the east, coalescing in the distance. 

“Nasty-looking hedgehogs,” the old Vuvalini abruptly observes in Max’s ear. “Guessing they’re gonna be a problem.”

Buzzards. He counts three of their spiky, angry little assault vehiles, fanging it straight for the disabled rig. 

For a moment, the panic is like being hit with a cattle prod, a blinding flash of anxiety that short-circuits everything. He’s frozen in place, muscles cramped and tight. This is it. He’s going to die, this is-

Glory _shrieks_ his name, and like crumbling sand, the paralysis slides away. He’s moving, charging after Furiosa as she sprints toward Riz’s wagon. “Eyes east, eyes east!” she bellows, her voice rough in her throat. 

“Eyes on!” Ace hollers back. The tanker is three-quarters rolled, and he’s hobbling around the base of it. “Thunder up!”

Furiosa hits the side of the wagon, with Max a bare second behind her. “Three Buzzards incoming,” she says breathlessly, and Riz nods, the whites of his eyes as stark as the powder on his skin. “You and Target-” she gestures to the War Boy in the lancer’s perch, “keep them away from the tanker. They’ll want it intact.”

“Boss, what about Miro? About Jumper?” Riz’s hands clench hard around his wheel, and Target leans over the edge of the perch.

“Got to deal with the Buzzards first,” Furiosa says tersely.

“But what happened-”

“Someone mined the road.” Her jaw clenches decisively. “If anything happens to us, I want you to go straight for Gastown.”

“We’ll die historic!” Target says fervently. “Boss, you’ll be so proud-”

“ _No._ ” There’s a tremble in her voice, an echo of a hurricane’s as it strips away her crew with its fury. “Remember what we talked about! Survival is the priority.”

He looks like he’s going to protest, but she glares at him, and he backs down. “Yes, Boss.”

“Good.” She slaps the side of the car. “Now thunder up!” 

As Riz’s big tires spray them with sand, she’s suddenly face to face with Max. Her eyes are ablaze, green stained with brown. She’s a desert plant that’s weathered many storms, and for one brief moment, their foreheads touch and he feels perfectly at ease. Furiosa is with him. If he dies, he does it for her, and he’ll live on in the blood flowing through her veins, pumping through her heart and fuelling her body. “Are you here, fool?” she asks, searching his face. “Are you here with me?”

He nods, loading his shotgun. “What’s the plan?”

Her lips narrow, dark and murderous intent flickering across her face. “We take ‘em out.” 

Furiosa is dangerous and deadly, and on the cusp of battle she is the most beautiful fucking thing he’s ever seen. His pulse is thundering in a way that has very little to do with the Buzzards speeding toward them, and he has to swallow hard to keep from biting at her mouth. When this is over-

“Fool,” she murmurs into his mouth as he’s trying to breathe, and then she’s drawing back, chambering a shell and sighting through her rifle. 

As soon as the Buzzards are in range, she starts firing, quick, methodical shots, her human hand a blur of motion as she reloads. The first two bullets crack the windshield and go right through the driver of the lead vehicle, and it slides into a dune. Riz swings by, and Target lobs a thunderstick into the wreck, where it explodes in a shower of sparks. 

The remaining two Buzzards split up, one going for Riz and the other bouncing over the sand toward the rig. There are caltrops in the back of the rig, and Ace already has the other War Boys pulling them out and dropping them in the vicinity. 

Max’s shotgun is no good at this distance, so he grabs an armful of caltrops from one of the younger War Boys - Gnasher? Nosher? - and starts scattering them. “Hey,” he says roughly. “Got a breach? How’s the tank?”

The younger War Boys is nothing but knees and elbows and terrified eyes. “Ace says it’s probably okay, but can’t tell on account it’s tipped.”

Max grunts. “Bit of luck.” He gestures to the caltrops, the high whine of four-cylinder Buzzard engines melting into his skull. “Get these further out.”

“I know how to set caltrops,” the younger Boy snaps back, but Max is already whirling to scatter the remaining metal spikes against the warm asphalt. 

Riz and his lancer have one of the Buzzards well-occupied, but the other is skirting the edge of the caltrops zone. Glory screams and lobs something at Max; he drops to the ground, just missing the steel bolt that pierces the air where his head has been a fraction of a second before. The Buzzard isn’t close enough for his shotgun to be terribly effective, but he rolls and fires anyway. By some miracle of physics and chance, he hits one of the tires, and the Buzzard lurches, spinning hard in the loose sand at the edge of the road. Two more bolts bounce off the macadam, and he scrambles to get out of range. 

Furiosa is a good distance away, striding tall with her face blazing and rifle at the ready. Two well-placed shots take down the Buzzards in the car, and right at that moment, Target proves himself as a lancer and the remaining car goes arse-over-tailpipe in a fantastic fireball. Whooping, Riz takes a wide loop around the burning vehicle, revving his engine and racing the two motorcycles behind him. 

After a long moment, one of the younger War Boys suddenly shouts, “Take _that_ , filth!” His jubilation cracks in his adolescent vocal cords, and then the rest of them are hollering and punching the air in victory. 

Max whirls, looking for Furiosa, and there she is, standing in the shadow of a dune with her rifle at her shoulder, whole and uninjured. She meets his eyes, his heart pounding hard in his chest, and she is _perfect_ -

He fully intends to close the yards between them and take her mouth in his, heedless of their watchers, but suddenly his limbs are ponderous and immovable, his blood heavy and clotted in freezing veins. One of the motorcycles skids to a stop beside him, the grinning War Boy punching his shoulder in friendly cameraderie. “Oi, Max! That was so _shine_ -”

The pebbles on the asphalt are starting to dance. 

Max knows what’s happening even before Glory starts to shriek, but he’s frozen in place, dread spiking through his body. No one else sees it, no one else realizes what’s happening, but it’s happening again, it’s happening _again_ -

The fourth Buzzard crests the dune, a wild roar of a giant engine in a giant machine, and _how had they not seen it_ -

And it’s coming down right on top of-

Furiosa is directly in its path, hobbled by her bad ankle and no time to run. 

He doesn’t see what happens. He’s seen it before. He’s seen it a thousand times. He sees it every time he closes his eyes. 

Glory 

Her mother. 

_Jessie_ -

There’s a noise like a wounded animal, harsh and loud and ragged, and then his fist connects with the jaw of the War Boy on the bike, and the kid goes down. He’s on the bike and revving the engine-

It feels a little like getting shot. There’s the sharp force of recognition, of the motor grumbling against the mortifying wetness between his legs, and then the hot, sick rush of adrenaline once he realizes the inevitability of his actions. 

He can’t run. Furiosa is here. She’d thrown herself to the ground at the last second, curled between the tires as the tractor roared overhead. She’s getting back to her feet, raising the rifle as Riz fangs it toward the interloper-

He can’t leave her, _he doesn’t want to_ -

His hands close over the grips like claws.

_You promised you’d help us_

_Where are you, Max?_

But somehow, he’s locked inside his body, and his hands are gunning the throttle. He cannot go through this again. He can’t unsee this nightmare. He is helpless to stop himself, helpless to control his limbs. He’s a body frozen as if by electric current, his muscles locked in place. His foot is popping the clutch, and the bike leaps forward, leaps up and away. 

He’s not riding toward the Buzzard. He’s riding away from it, the tender place between his lungs being viciously shredded by the sound of the engine. 

He’s riding away from everything.


	84. Chapter 84

Somehow, the wheels miss her, but the roar of the engine and the force of the fall knock her breath from her lungs. For one long, panicked moment, she can’t move, and then her body spasms and she’s choking on sand and grit. 

Rifle. Where’s her rifle - there. Somehow, it’s still gripped in her metal hand, her human hand clenched protectively against her chest. She’s alive and her remaining limbs are still intact, and for a few precious, sobbing breaths, she can only lay there, cradling her living arm and letting the shock bleed out of her flesh. 

The ringing in her ears subsides, consumed by the thunder of an unfamiliar engine: the Buzzard. She’d counted three, and she’d been so _sure_ \- but there isn’t time for that now. 

Forcing herself upright, she coughs life back into her body, and slides a shell into the receiver with shaking fingers. Her eyes are tearing and blurring with the grit, but she just needs one clear shot…

Her bullet pierces the back left tire, the torn rubber thumping wildly as it spins itself loose. The tractor sags, but continues undaunted. Riz is dancing his wagon dangerously close to the line of caltrops, trying to draw the Buzzard away from the disabled rig, but it’s not working. 

She doesn’t see Max punch Gutser - the others will tell her about it later - but as she staggers across the road, her bad ankle shrilling with each step, she sees the aftermath. She sees Max get on the bike, sees him rev the engine. She shouts his name, alarm stabbing through her chest, but there’s no recognition in his eyes, just the overwhelming, white blur of panic. 

The Buzzard tractor’s whining saw is going for Riz, and Max is having a full-blown meltdown. In the weeks to come, she’ll have time to piece together what happened, but right now, in this moment, she only knows she has to triage the dangers, and that means going after the Buzzard. 

She has two shells left. She has to make them count. 

The line of caltrops glints in the sun; she edges between two of them, slipping inside the protective circle. A single caltrop won’t stop the tractor, not by a long shot, but if she has to blow the tanker to take out the Buzzards - and she will, if only to send a message that this is her fucking strip of asphalt, and an incursion like this absolutely will not stand - she needs to be closer. 

Target launches his second-to-last thunderstick, and _misses_. The tractor veers to the side, the driver howling with maniacal laughter as Riz’s front quarter panel goes flying from the impact. 

“Boss,” says Ace tightly. He’s limping badly, a steel bolt protruding from his shoulder and slowly dripping blood. He glances across her face, at the damp warmth trickling down her neck. “Boys are trying to get the rig up-”

“Leave it. No time.” She frowns. Target launches his last thunderstick, and it hits its mark, the explosion igniting hydraulics and severing the tractor’s spinning blade. The Buzzard continues unaffected, nudging against Riz as the two vehicles make tight circles in the loose sand. One of the younger Boys, Klash, still has his motorcycle and is trying to get the Buzzards’ attention, but they’re much more interested in Riz. 

“Damn near useless down here,” Ace mutters. “What’s the plan, Boss?”

“Get the hose.”

“Boss?”

“Just do it.” They’d prepared as best they could, but there isn’t much; Target is out of sticks, and Klash has four but he’s barely pubescent, and just doesn’t have the muscle yet for a proper throw. Furiosa has two bullets left, and Max is-

She can’t think about Max right now. She has to concentrate. Every part of her is screaming for her to follow him, but she _can’t_ , she has a responsibility to her crew, and she’s got enough blood on her hands for twelve lifetimes, let alone one. Max can take care of himself; she knows this like she knows how to breathe. 

She doesn’t have much in the way of defensive weaponry. What she does have, however, is three thousand gallons of guzzoline. 

One of the younger War Boys, Sito, is helping Ace haul the hose. “You thinking flamethrower, Boss?” he asks. 

Smart kid. “Get the road wet,” she says. “Keep it outside the caltrops, away from the tanker.”   
She knows exactly what kind of luck she has, but Mothers, she could use some right now. Max is speeding into the wasteland, and if she blows herself up defending the rig, she won’t be able to go after him-

Her stomach clenches hard at the thought, and she wrenches the nozzle on the hose. The sharp tang of guzzoline fills the air. 

Riz, thank the Mothers, sees what they’re doing, and starts edging the Buzzard tractor closer to the jackknifed rig. It’s hard going – the Buzzard driver has lost his saw, but he’s still intent on smashing Riz to bits. All four of Riz’s tires have been shredded by steel bolts, and when he comes in contact with the asphalt, his rims spray sparks across the road. 

She has two bullets left. Ace and Sito are spraying down the macadam, and Ello and Blue are running over with the last armful of thundersticks. The others are standing around and on top of the tanker, each armed with a thunderstick and bristling with the terrified eagerness of the untried. It hits her like a punch in the chest that not a single one them - with the exception of Miro, Ace and herself - have ever done war. 

And Max and his hard-won competence are speeding into the desert-

The Buzzard tractor comes into range. She raises her rifle, but the angle into the cab is too severe, and she risks a miss if she fires now. Klash zips around the bottom of the tractor, hurling his last thunderstick into the undercarriage. Flames lick out as the brake fluid ignites.

For a split second, the tractor turns enough that she has a clear shot, and she takes it; the Buzzard in passenger seat slumps forward, a fine red spray coating the inside of the cracked windshield. 

“Boss?” Sito prompts. He’s pushing his voice from his chest, trying to sound more grown. He’s got a thunderstick hefted, ready to slam it down on the asphalt and ignite the guzzoline. Ace, Ello and Blue are hauling the hose back to a safe distance, Ace limping hard and visibly gritting his teeth. 

“Hold until I say,” Furiosa instructs. If she’s lucky, she’ll get one more shot – her last bullet, and what’s more precious right now, bullets or the already-wasted guzzoline? She’ll use her last bullet if it means avoiding an explosion. 

Klash is young, but he’s got a little training on the motorcycle, and he and Riz are easing the Buzzard toward the slick of guzzoline. The smell is thick and shimmering in the air; Furiosa is counting on the explosive volatility of the evaporated fuel.

The Buzzard is fighting hard to keep the bulk of the tractor between himself and Furiosa. She’s got one eye in her scope and the other – her bad eye, the one gone dark and cloudy – on the battle. Riz is pushing hard, and Klash gets too close to the line of caltrops, and accidentally takes out his own front tire. The bike goes skidding across the pavement. 

At the last second, Riz jerks the wheel, and Furiosa takes her last shot. It goes straight through the windshield and buries itself in the driver’s head. The tractor slides to a halt, and Riz brakes hard to avoid a collision. 

_One man, one bullet,_ the memory of Katie Concannon mutters approvingly, and Furiosa sinks down to her knees, her legs abruptly gone to water. 

Sito whoops, and throws his arms around Blue. Klash comes stumbling over, grinning through bloody road rash, and the Boys by the rig come running. 

“Boss?” Ace asks, but he’s not in any better shape than she is. He’s still bleeding, and he’s a shade of pale that has very little to do with his war paint. 

“Gonna need the rig back up,” she says hoarsely, and uses her now-useless rifle to leverage herself upright. “Ello, what’s the situation with the road? Miro? Jumper?”

He’s breathing hard from the effort of hauling the heavy tanker hose back and forth. “Car is fucked. There’s a lot of drifted sand, and we can’t tell if there’s more mines.”

“Fuck.” Furiosa scrubs a hand across her face. She’s shaking as the adrenaline bleeds from her system, and she’s _lost_ people, and Max is a rapidly dwindling shadow on the horizon. Frustrated, exhausted tears prick in her eyes. “ _Fuck_. Okay. Do we have any idea of what the minefield looks like?”

No one answers. Sito scuffs his boot, and Klash spits a clot of blood to the side. Finally, Ello hedges, “There was just the one explosion that flipped Miro and Jumper. They rolled off the road, but it was just the one boom on the asphalt.”

“Do Buzzards even _plant_ mines?” Blue asks. 

“Buzzards do whatever it takes,” Ace says. “Pit traps, explosives, anything. They’ll take your rig down to bare steel and suck the marrow from your bones.”

Sito looks vaguely queasy. 

Furiosa sighs. “We have to sweep the road.” There is no alternative. The long strip of pavement – the Last Road – is the Citadel’s connection to Gastown, and now that Gastown is trading again, the route has to be preserved. If she were still Joe’s Imperator, she’d signal for assistance, and the minesweeping crew would come out with their heavily-armored vehicle. If she were in the War Rig, she could lower the cow catcher and push any mines to the side for defusing and salvage. 

The new rig doesn’t have a cow catcher; she’d discussed it with Keno and his crew, but there’d been so much work required on the transmission that she’d told him to focus on that instead. The oversight burns. 

Max would know what to do. Max has a preternatural ability to survive in the wasteland, and she has no doubt he’d know how to find and identify a mine hidden in the sand, but Max isn’t here, and the sooner she gets the rig back to the Citadel, the sooner she can go after him. If the wind doesn’t pick up, she’ll be able to follow his tracks-

An inkling of a plan bubbles in her mind. “How much chain do we have?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so we're visiting friends and I caught Husbandthing's cold, so I blame any weirdness on the decongestant. 
> 
> The next few chapters should be much quicker, lovelies, because they're mostly already written. I'm so sorry for the delays.


	85. Chapter 85

The chain they have isn’t long enough to stretch the full width of the road, but it’s enough to drag through the piles of sand that have drifted onto the asphalt. When they uncover the first mine, Furiosa releases a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding: it’s an anti-tank mine, a thick, flat cylinder with flaking olive paint. It’s a familiar design, one she’s seen many time before, and not the booby-trapped improvised explosive she’d feared. 

Ace hobbles over and defuses the mine with a quick, practiced movement. Hefting it with his uninjured arm, he frowns and squints in the bright sunlight. “Military salvage. No other markings. Thing’s _old_.”

“Is it still stable?” Furiosa asks immediately. 

“En’t gonna _juggle_ it.” He sucks his teeth. “But it’s probably okay.”

They find five of them, all buried in mounds of sand and nudged free by the dragging chain. They’re all anti-tank mines, primed to go off under the heavy weight of a vehicle. Furiosa resolves that the rest of the ride home will be at a cautious crawl, and that a cow catcher will be among the very first repairs done to the rig. 

As soon as the road’s clear, she sends a handful of Boys to investigate Miro’s car. It’s a smoking wreck, so badly damaged it’s beyond hope of salvage. Miro’s managed to pull himself out of the worst of it, but Jumper wasn’t so lucky; the younger War Boy had been thrown clear of the vehicle and killed instantly. His white paint is smeared thick with blood.

“Witness,” Ace mutters. 

It was his first fucking run, she thinks, eyes suddenly blurring. 

Sito and Ello have Miro slung between them, but he’s badly burned and barely lucid. “Mines,” he mumbles.

“We know,” Furiosa assures him, her throat tight. “Hang in there, okay?”

“ _Mines_ ,” he insists, and then passes out. 

The three towers of the Citadel are tantalizingly close, a five minute drive even at half speed, but the rig is still jackknifed and twisted in the soft sand. By some stroke of luck, the tanker hasn’t been breached, and the only guzzoline spilled is from the aborted attempt to fry the Buzzards. Her head is starting to ache, blood from a wound she hadn’t noticed starting to itch on her neck as it dries. 

Standing on top of the cab, she lets herself look into the distance, just for a moment. She can’t see Max anymore, can only see the treads of his tires fading into the mirage-

“Boss,” Ace says sharply. “Need you _here_.”

She thinks very hard about punching him. 

After a lengthy discussion, it’s clear the only way to tip the tanker upright is to have Riz nudge the rig with the nose of his wagon. The hitch is badly damaged, the locking pin bent and ready to shear. Riz doesn’t have the torque to haul the tanker himself, but once they get back on the road, he follows behind, his front bumper to the rear of the tanker and supporting a bit of the weight. “Gonna have to go easy on those curves up to the lift,” Ace warns. “That pin snaps, and it’ll take out the whole-”

“I know.” Furiosa grits her teeth. She’s got three thousand gallons of precariously-connected guzzoline trailing behind her, five ancient mines behind her seat, and an injured War Boy riding shotgun. The cab smells strongly of motor oil and burnt flesh. 

It’s just another day in the post-Joe Citadel. 

 

****

 

The trade delegation is more than twenty-four hours overdue, and the energy in the Citadel is approaching a feverish whine. 

No one knows what’s going on. They’d been taking turns manning the telescope, and Toast had been the one to shriek when everything fell apart. Capable had stood frozen in place, gripping Keno’s arm with Cheedo tucked under her chin. The carnage was barely visible without the telescope, but they could see the smoke.

As soon as the rig starts limping back down the road, Capable abandons the telescope, sprinting down to the garages with the others hard on her heels. Her heart is solid in her throat, a choking desperation that pounds in her chest. 

Furiosa is the first one out of the cab, a curtain of blood down her scalp and a furious expression on her face. Ace is right behind her, one arm hanging loose, skipping hard to catch up with her. “Miro’s in the cab,” she tells Mari hoarsely. “Burned. It’s bad.” 

“We’ll take care of him,” the Vuvalini assures her, and gestures to a couple of Repair Boys standing nearby. “You two, with me.”

“What can I do?” Keno is asking. 

“Mines,” Furiosa says, and waves her prosthetic at the rig. “Behind the seat. Five of them.”

His eyes go wide, but he nods. 

Toast has a deathgrip on Ello’s wrist, touching each of the other War Boys in turn as she does a headcount. “Max,” she says suddenly, “where’s Max?”

“Gone,” says Furiosa, and for a split second, Capable thinks she’s going to puke, because Max can’t be _dead_ \- “I need a bike.”

“You’re _not_ going out there-” Ace growls.

“I need,” Furiosa repeats, blank and deadly, “a bike.”

“You’re needed here,” he snaps. “Wasteland fool’s own choice to go off on his own. Don’t be stupid-”

“I’m _taking a bike_ -”

“And then what? So you find him - you gonna drag him back here?” There’s a flicker in her expression, like distant lightning. She sets her jaw and tries to push past him, but Ace grabs her shoulder and digs in. “He made the choice to run.”

“And I’m going after him-”

“He stole from us,” Ace growls. “A bike, something we en’t got lots of. And if you go, you’re stealing more than just another bike.” He glares at her. “You knocked me off the War Rig, and yeah, now I get why, because that wasn’t just for you. It was for _them_.” He shrugs his injured arm at Toast and Capable, wincing at the motion. “You go after him, and you’re doing it for you.”

“I’ll come _back_ -”

“You won’t,” he snaps. “Not without him. You been leaning on him since he came. If he stays out there, so will you. You’ve gone soft. Weak.”

Furiosa is breathing hard through her nose, a hairsbreadth away from erupting into violence. “It’s not weakness to care,” she grinds out.

“It’s more than caring! It’s you putting him above your _crew_ , above your duty.” Ace shakes his head, utterly disgusted. “We got Buzzards blowing us up, a half-trained crew, and you think it’s fine to go run off? The fuck is your head? Thought I taught you better than that.” He spits, a thick wad that snaps against the ground. “I seen more sense in a half-wit Pup.”

Capable watches, frozen in place, her heart in her throat and knots boiling in her stomach. Furiosa shoves hard away from Ace, and for a long moment, they stand across from each other, bodies rigid and trembling with the effort of holding back the fight.

“What are you gonna do?” Ace demands. “You gonna run? You gonna throw this place away?”

“One thing,” Furiosa snarls, and there’s the harsh burr of steel and tears in her voice. “The _one fucking thing_ I’ve wanted for myself...”

“The only things we own are in our pockets,” the old War Boy says roughly. “And en’t you the one who keeps telling us people aren’t things?”

Furiosa _roars_ , the bellow of a trapped and wounded animal, and stalks a few feet away, taking great shuddering breaths. “The fuck,” she manages, hoarse and bitter, “did the Buzzards get so close?”

“We’ve been watching the road,” Toast pipes up immediately. “There was no moon last night, so they had to have planted the mines then. We couldn’t have seen.”

“Fuck,” says Furiosa again, and then, “ _Fuck_.” She scrubs one hand across her face, flaking off the blood that’s gone crusty on her skin. “Why the Buzzards? Why _now_?”

No one has any answers, and she storms off to start repairing the rig. 

****

In the morning, Max is still gone. Weapons, bike, jacket: all disappeared into the desert without a trace, the cold morning breeze erasing the tracks in the waste. There isn’t a breath of activity, not from the Buzzards, not from anyone. 

Furiosa accepts the news with a carefully blank face, and thanks Toast for her report. She’s as still as a leaf on a breathless day, but Capable can _see_ the shockwaves radiating from her rigid body.

“No,” Cheedo breathes, eyes wide and dark. “He’ll come back. He _will_ -”

Furiosa excuses herself from the room, and doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going.

The scream echoes off the towers, tearing through the afternoon like a Polecat’s chainsaw; even though Capable’s expecting it, bracing for it, it still rakes across her skin and burns in the roots of her teeth.


	86. Chapter 86

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stitching day! Have TWO chapters, my lovelies.

Thirty days later, there’s still no word.

Life progresses without him - who could expect otherwise - but it somehow feels brittle, like a bubble that’s too fragile to exist in the harsh desert air.

_If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane._

Furiosa tries to tell herself that nothing has changed, that she’s the same as she’s always been, but her crews are more solicitous, the girls lingering when there is no obvious reason to. It’s utterly maddening. Not only does she have to contend with Max being gone - which isn’t an issue, because she’d known he would rabbit, she’d _known_ \- everyone else around her is acting like her pistons are cracked and moments away from explosive failure.

She’s not sure she _isn’t_. She’s ragged and burning, staggering after an amputation more abrupt and severe than her arm, and the more she tries to clamp it down, to lock it away and weld up the edges, the hotter it flares. She blazes through the halls, cinders of pain and fury tumbling in her wake. The ache to leave pulses with every heartbeat, a burning need to find him hold him _kill_ him searing inside her. 

It doesn’t help that the Buzzards have clearly decided to annex the Citadel, and are getting bolder about their attacks. She’s already running patrols around the clock, sweeping the road with the new cow catcher and scooping up dozens of anti-tank mines, and fighting off the leering little assault vehicles that dart along the edges of the road. If nothing else, the Citadel is gaining valuable scrap and ammunition; the Buzzards are unusually well-armed, and Furiosa makes sure every vehicle she takes down gets towed back to the garage for Keno and his crews. 

“Mines and ammo,” Ace mutters. “Carrying a lot of firepower, these scavs.”

Furiosa nods in agreement. Somewhere, the Buzzards have broken into an old munitions stockpile, one that has been untouched since the time Before. She’d have guessed there weren’t any left. 

When she’s not behind the wheel, she’s occupying a sniper’s nest in any one of a dozen perches around the Citadel, trying to ward off the mine-layers. Fourteen more Pups have joined the ranks of the War Boys, but she can still barely scrape together two full crews. Miro is isolated in the Vault as his burns heal, bound up in clean bandages and antiseptic green goo, his tiny, fretful Pup of a brother glued to his side. Ace is still hobbling around and unable to mount a rig, so he’s taken over training, but almost every single one of the new War Boys is so green they’re still falling off the vehicles. They’re hardly more than children, all stringy adolescent muscle and wide-eyed hubris. The older War Boys have made heroic efforts to mentor the younger ones, but building skills takes time and practice, and with the Buzzards hanging just on the edge of their territory, it’s not possible to conduct training runs. The Buzzards are watching, and even a simple run to Gastown has suddenly become an exercise in speed and agility.

Then, they lose one.

It’s not unexpected. Everyone is working triple shifts - at least two patrol runs a day, plus all the necessary repair and maintenance - and they’re all exhausted. Furiosa is pushing hard to make sure her War Boys get the sleep they need, but the repair crews recruited from the Wretched aren’t as efficient as the Boys, and some of the Boys resent not doing their own repairs, so they work on their cars when they should be sleeping. She’s had to confiscate stimulants from Boys who _know_ better.

It’s a simple mistake, one that might have been survivable if they weren’t in combat, and certainly wouldn’t have happened if he’d been properly trained. He just loses his balance lobbing a thunderstick, and falls off the rig. The Buzzards are on him in an instant, and before Furiosa can even retaliate, the War Boy is dead.

He’s so new that in the heat of the moment, she doesn’t even remember his name.

They hold the road and the Buzzards retreat. Back in the garage, she goes through her crew and makes sure everyone else is alive. She’s so angry she’s shaking, and it takes everything she has to keep her voice level and calm. Some of the younger War Boys are crying, wet trails carved into the white paint on their cheeks. It’s not their fault, and she wants to tell them that, but she doesn’t trust herself to say more than the most basic platitudes. They’re desperate for reassurance, and as Imperator, she should be the one to give it to them, but she just steps back and lets Ace take over, his eyes flat and resentful. 

“Boss?” says Ello quietly, following her to the door.

She shakes her head. “Get some sleep.”

Once she’s alone, Furiosa locks herself in her room and screams into her fist, biting down until her knuckles have bloody crescents that follow the line of her teeth.

****

She doesn’t let herself think about Max.

She doesn’t think about the way they’d whirled together in battle, the way he’d anticipated her empty clip and had another one at the ready. She doesn’t think about his confident hands on the wheel of the rig, of how he’d kept the rig steady and let her balance a foot on his shoulder so she could get the shot. She doesn’t think of the quiet way he’d hum and make her feel calm.

She doesn’t think about how good it felt to have his warm back against hers as they slept, about the salt-sour tang of his jacket beneath her head.

She doesn’t think about his lips, ghosting across her skin, of his fingers sliding inside her.

It’s not fair, it’s _not fair_ -

She’s starting to believe he’s not coming back.

****

The nightmares escalate.

She wakes up screaming and thrashing, and there’s no one there to pull her out of it. Her door is locked, the hallway empty, and the thick stone swallows the noise like sand.

She hasn’t ever had nightmares like this, not when she was freshly ejected from the Vault, not when she was out of her mind with fever when she lost her arm. The living and the dead mingle in the darkness, a cacophony of accusation and anger. 

She rips off Joe’s mask, like she does almost every night, but this time, it’s _Katie_ staring back at her. “What did you do to my initiate?” the big woman growls. “What the fuck did you do to her?”

Max stands in the middle of them, that same expression of blank panic on his face. She shouts his name until she’s spitting blood, but he looks right past her.

Furiosa knows how to shake off the nightmares - she’s had far too many years of practice - but this one clings to her like a second skin, hanging tight in her chest for the next four days.

Just when she thinks she’s clear of it, it happens again. She loses her voice, and tries to find excuses not to sleep.

****

Sometimes, when the girls pressure her enough, she comes to the Salon and sits in the mound of pillows, mechanically eating whatever food is placed in her hands. She’s hardly still these days, and the second she is, her body shuts down, but she’s gasping awake moments later. 

“Why does she do that?” Cheedo whispers mournfully, as if Furiosa can’t hear. “She didn’t have nightmares when she was in the vault with us.”

“Yes, she did,” Toast hisses back. “Angharad heard them. How do you think she knew Furiosa would help us?”

She feels Mari’s gaze heavy on her back as she retreats. 

****

If she lets herself think about it - which she doesn’t, she’s a machine, she doesn’t need the tenderness of human interaction - the fury that boils up from her lungs is so hot and acrid she can taste his blood.

How dare he. How dare he treat her so gently, and then disappear? How dare he make every effort to gain her trust, and then betray her?

“You’re going to break that,” Cheedo says mildly. She’s washing used ampoules, preparing them for sterilization, and Furiosa’s brought some up from the garage.

Furiosa looks down at the vial in her hand, and forces her fingers to unclench. 

****

Both of the Vuvalini have been watching her with the intensity of buzzards, circling around as if waiting for her to fall. The girls do the same; every time Furiosa turns around, someone is handing her a plate of food or a mug of milk. The notion of eating makes her stomach roil, and when she’s sure she won’t get caught, she’ll pass it along to the nearest willing taker.

“Drink this,” says Mari. 

Furiosa takes a sip, but she can taste the soporific. She walks out of the Vault and hands it to the nearest War Boy.

****

As if the Buzzards aren’t enough, there’s a plague spreading among the Wretched. It starts as a fever and ends with a crusting rash, and burns more fiercely in adults than children. It’s impossible to tell how it jumps up into the towers, but it does.

Among Furiosa’s circle of associates, Cheedo catches it immediately, of course, with Capable less than a day behind. Dag isolates herself up in the gardens, away from everyone, and Toast holds out for almost a week. “Chickenpox,” Mari pronounces, and it’s impossible to tell if she’s naming the disease or inventing a curse.

Furiosa’s already running on empty, and when she finds herself sitting in the cab of the rig, bleary-eyed and completely unable to remember how to drive, Ace cocks a thumb at the door and shakes his head. “Out of here,” he orders. “Go. Now.”

She crawls into bed and doesn’t move for four days, a miserable lump amid blankets that no longer smell like Max’s skin.

When her fever breaks, she finally emerges, covered in itching red pustules. Gruff, taciturn Amy takes one look at her and throws her arms around Furiosa’s neck. “Mothers of all, girl,” she mumbles. “Thought you’d gone and died.”

It seems like an exaggeration until Furiosa sees how the others are staring at her, as if she’s immortan herself.

“Pounded on your door for hours,” Capable says hoarsely. “We couldn’t find a torch big enough to melt through on our own, and Keno’s been too sick to help.”

The enormity of it sticks in her throat, and she can only lean against Amy and wait until the dizziness passes. “I’m sorry,” she manages. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s the thing, pet,” Mari says quietly. “You’re not alone. We keep telling you, and you don’t seem to listen.” She sighs, and offers a bowl of greenish-gray paste that smells strongly of mint and clay. “Here. Put this on your spots. It’ll help with the itch.”

It’s been thirty days since Dag painted green stripes on Max’s forehead, and Furiosa’s chest feels as huge and empty as the waste.


	87. Chapter 87

“I _like_ Harvest!” Maz exclaims, examining one of the tiny, steaming cakes Nita brings out on a large piece of sheet metal. “These are so _shine_!”

“Wait until you actually _eat one_ ,” Cheedo teases. 

“This is a good idea,” Keno says to Capable, his voice low beneath the excited chatter. “Lets the others feel more connected, you know?”

“The harvest was a success because of you, too,” she points out. “We all work, we all eat.”

He scratches the back of his head, picking at a remaining chickenpox scab. “That’s. Well. I mean, it’s not how it was.” 

“The way it was wasn’t fair,” Capable says firmly. “Not to you, not to anyone.”

Keno shrugs. Even almost one hundred days later, he’s still so uneasy with saying Joe was wrong. She knows he supports the Council, and he’s thrown himself into any task required without question, but there’s still a hesitation, that split second between thinking and doing. She can see the feedback loops being interrupted, the moment when his brain skips a little like the needle on Joe’s old singing box. It would be infuriating, but he’s trying _so hard_ , and he’s so deliberate and gentle in correcting himself, in correcting those around him. 

They’re tiptoeing around each other again. She’s almost certain it started weeks ago, when everyone was so sick. The epidemic has mostly burned itself out, with a surprising minimum of casualties. He’d been one of the worst cases, red pustules erupting everywhere, even in his mouth and down his throat. Capable had been recovering herself, itchy and miserable, and she’d been gripped with a terrible, selfish fear that he was going to die. “He’ll make it,” Mari had said, sleep-deprived and irritable at the constant questions. 

“He’s half-life!” Capable had snapped. “How do you _know_?”

“No one knows these things, girl. If you’re so worried, stop scratching yourself and get him some water. Do something _useful_.”

Capable is her name. She’d pulled herself together, but even now, sitting relaxed at the table with the sweet cakes between them, she can’t shake the feeling that losing him would be something just short of catastrophic, and not just because he keeps the Repair Boys in line. 

She _likes_ him. As a person. Not the same way she likes her sisters, but still. 

It’s a strange sensation, and not at all unpleasant, but part of her is afraid he sees her only as the liaison to the Council, as an untouchable former Wife. 

“Oh vee _eight_ ,” Spade moans around a mouthful of cake. “It’s shiny and _chrome_ -”

Cheedo giggles, and pushes the plate toward Riz. “Try it. You _have_ to.”

The others are eagerly tucking in, exclaiming over the fancy treats, but Keno’s gone quiet, his eyes drifting across the room. 

“What’s wrong?” Capable asks quietly. .

He glances around, but no one’s paying any attention. “Worried about the boss,” he finally admits.

Furiosa is standing across the dining hall next to Mari; Capable’s seen her look more relaxed headed into battle. Mari leans over and says something, patting the younger woman’s arm; Furiosa looks away. 

“Max left,” Capable says.

“Can’t be it,” Keno says. “I seen him in action. He’s a road warrior, same as her. En’t nothing can hurt him.”

Capable bites her lip. Cheedo’s been talking about broken hearts for _weeks_ , and even before everyone got sick, it was tiresome. She knows it’s not a simple thing, that human emotion can’t be distilled down to words, and she’s not even sure that Furiosa and Max have defined their relationship for themselves - or even if they _could_. 

“I think it’s a lot of things,” she hedges. 

He nods, like he gets it. “Course it is. They’re trading paint. Gets complicated.”

She blinks. “Trading paint…?”

“You _know_. Polishing gearsticks. Revving the engines.” He rolls his eyes, looking, of all things, _embarrassed_ to have to be explaining this to her. “ _Fucking._ ”

“ _Oh._ ” And now she’s squinting at him. “Wait. Really?” Cheedo had guessed, but...

“Seriously? You seen ‘em.” He frowns. “You think they en’t?”

She truly doesn’t know. “I mean, I _guess_ , but she was a Wife...”

A shadow crosses his face. “...I forget that.” He mulls it over, and then says carefully, “You think...did he hurt her like he hurt you?”

What anyone knows of Furiosa could fit in two cupped hands. The night in the Salon she’d talked about Katie was the most anyone had _ever_ heard, and although there’s been rampant speculation and countless attempts to draw her out, she’s been as tight-lipped as ever. “I don’t know,” Capable says. “She’s never said. But Joe wasn’t a good man.”

Keno looks deeply uncomfortable. “...she’s the _Boss_ , though. He couldn’t have-”

“She wasn’t the Boss then.”

He’s quiet a moment. “Max,” he finally says. “Max is a good man. Right? He treats her real chrome?”

“I think so, yes.”

He nods to himself, satisfied. “Good. So what we gotta do is keep her rig running until he comes back.”

Wait. Does he actually mean… “‘Keep her rig running’? That’s not-” she can’t help it; she’s snorting with laughter- “that’s not like trading paint, is it?”

Keno looks _horrified_. “ _No_ , that’s not what I- she’s the _Boss_ , I would _never_ -”

“I’m teasing,” Capable says, and is rewarded by the warmth of his grin. She snags an amaranth cake and tosses it to him. “Here. Eat this before they’re all gone.”

His eyes flutter closed with pleasure as he chews, and she thinks for a moment about how soft his lips look. 

Keno is a good man, too. 

The knowledge settles pleasantly into her belly, like a warm, golden cake. 

 

****

 

It’s a harvest celebration. 

That’s what Capable and the others are calling it, anyway, but as soon as Furiosa enters the dining hall, the smell of amaranth cakes hits her, and she’s suddenly a vessel of glass, brittle and transparent and flooded to the brim with memories of mud and green-

_”Ugh,” Valkyrie snorts. “Hate ‘em. Hate all of them.”_

_“Don’t be stupid. They mean well.”_

_She sticks out her tongue. “Pah. Aunties and aunties and aunties for_ days _.” Her voice goes high and nasal, mimicking one particular Vuvalini of the visiting clan. “‘Oi chickies, you grown right well, gone into big girls now, eh? Give us a kiss, chickies, gizza kiss!’” She reaches out with a flurry of pinching motions, and then snaps her teeth like a dingo. “Pinch my cheeks again, you old bat, and I’ll toss you into the swamp-”_

 _Furiosa is laughing hard, and she falls against Val’s shoulder. “She was so_ awful _,” she breathes. “I can’t even-”_

 _“And her_ breath _!”_

 _“Oh my_ god _-”_

_Val knocks her head against Furiosa’s. “When we’re aunties, we’ll never be like that,” she says, with the resolute belief of youth._

“There’s that smile we’ve been missing,” Mari says, startling Furiosa out of her reverie. “Happy memories, pet?” Her lined face is kind. 

Furiosa’s throat is suddenly too tight to speak, so she just nods. Strange, how something so happy could weigh so much in her chest, but perhaps it’s because her weight distribution is off. Perhaps she’s just so used to carrying sorrow that anything else seems impossible. 

“I remember harvest in the Green Place,” Mari says, hugging her shawl around her shoulders. Her eyes are half-closed like a contented lizard. “The other clans coming together, everyone exchanging stories and trade...that’s really what those days were for, the stories,” she adds, nudging against Furiosa as if the fact is confidential, and not something obvious. “Get all those crazy women together, away from their men and children. Get ‘em good and happy-”

“-and _drunk_ -”

“Oh, aye, that too.” She laughs. “That’s when the _good_ stories come out.” She tucks an arm through the crook of Furiosa’s prosthetic. “Sometimes I feel bad for you girls,” she says seriously. “We were always on the move. You never stayed with the clans, never had any chance to be with other kids, never put down any roots.”

“We had each other. And we had you mothers.”

Mari shakes her head. “It’s not enough. Mary and I argued about that plenty, but she couldn’t stand leaving you with another clan, and then we found Valkyrie…”

Furiosa blinks. “I thought Mama brought me for Katie.”

“Course she did, when you were older. But you were bound to a bike before you could even walk, you and Val both.”

Across the room, Capable is laughing, her cloud of red hair cushioning her head against Keno’s shoulder, and he’s laughing, too, and it’s so casually _intimate_ that Furiosa’s chest clenches with dark jealousy. 

Val is dead, Max is _gone_ -

It feels like breaking bone, like metal crunching and crumpling inside her lungs. 

“If you hadn’t been with us, you wouldn’t have been taken,” Mari says quietly. 

That comes as a cold splash. _Mari_ has regrets? Mari, who is preternaturally, unflappably calm? The words come automatically, with a solidity she doesn’t feel: “I was seventeen. I was Katie’s initiate. I had every reason to be there.” 

“Even so.” The old Vuvalini shakes herself. “But listen to me. An old woman, gone maudlin at the harvest festival, the thing I swore I’d never be.” She barks a laugh. “We all become our mothers in the end, eh? What a world.”

She reaches up and tucks a wayward curl behind Furiosa’s ear. “Furiosa, my girl…” She bites her lip, like she’s going to say something but then thinks better of it. “Well. It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

Mari pats her cheek. “I know things aren’t easy for you, and they haven’t ever been. I just...well. We _love_ you, pet. We love you so much. Something to keep in mind, eh?”

Furiosa makes herself nod. 

“Can you make me a promise?” Mari says, slipping her fingers around Furiosa’s human hand. “Can you promise to be happy, just for tonight?”

It seems like an impossible request, and a cruel one at that. She’s not being unhappy _on purpose_ , just to spite everyone else. If she had any control over her emotions, she’d prefer not to feel anything at all. “Mari, I-”

“I spoke wrong. I don’t mean you need to run giggling through the halls, although mothers know, it’d do you some good. I just mean, sit here with what you have. See the things you’ve built, this place you’ve created.” She gives Furiosa’s hand a bit of a shake. “This is about success. This is about being alive. Rest on your laurels, girl: you’ve earned it.”

She’s right, at least fundamentally, factually. It still makes Furiosa feel shaky and lightheaded. She wants to protest. She wants to go back to her room and hide. She wants to bury herself in blankets that once smelled like Max and wallow in the comfortable darkness. She isn’t meant for this light, she’s a weapon, she’s meant to be used, to spill sorrow and blood-

“It’s a lot to ask,” Mari soothes, sensing the panic attack like an oncoming storm, and trying to head it off. “I know it’s a lot. Maybe too much. Let’s start out with something easy, shall we? A drink, perhaps, and improvise from there.”

Furiosa clamps down on a hard burst of indignant fury, ragged and ashamed. “Yeah,” she breathes. “That, um. Maybe I’d like that.”

“That’s my girl,” Mari says, and pats her arm fondly. “We keep moving. We always keep on moving.”


	88. Chapter 88

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've been spending a lot of time angsting about Max and Furiosa, and I love you and don't want you to die of stress, so here...have some happy fluff.
> 
> If I don't get another chapter up before tomorrow...Happy Halloween!
> 
> EDIT: tag update!

The Buzzards don’t stop. Capable isn’t a War Boy, so all she can do is try and make sure the rest of the Citadel is running as smoothly as possible. Furiosa is always in motion, her face painted with black grease and gray shadows. 

Ello and Keno brush past her in the hall, freshly white. Keno skips to a halt when he sees her. “They’re having transmission issues with the rig again, and Boss wants a dedicated blackthumb out there to keep an eye on it.”

“You’re going to Gastown?”

He jerks a nod, his teeth flashing with a brief, feral grin. “Finally gonna make some War.” She opens her mouth to protest, but he’s already holding up a hand. “I know you don’t like it, but I got nine thousand days, and I’ve never ridden on the rig in War.” His eyes go soft. “I like what’s being made here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just...this is-”

“I understand,” she says. And she does. It’s been one hundred days since Furiosa ripped Joe’s face off, and even so, Capable still wakes up occasionally, terrified that today is a Breeding Day, and Miss Giddy will be telling them to wash up for Joe’s visit. She doesn’t expect it’s any different for those who’d grown up thinking Joe was a god. “Just be careful.” On impulse, she rocks to her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. “For luck.”

“Luck,” he breathes, like it’s something he’s never even heard of, and she can’t see him blush beneath the paint, but she knows it’s there. His hands come up by her face, stuttering with hesitation about touching her. “I just…” He swallows. “I don’t want to hurt you. Not like Joe did-”

“You are _nothing_ like Joe,” Capable says fiercely.

Suddenly, he’s very close - not exactly looming, because she doesn’t find him threatening, but close enough she can feel the warmth radiating from his body and smell the earthy dampness of the chalk. “Capable...is that a compliment?” 

His dark eyelashes are dusted with white, the eyes beneath uncertain. 

She’d asked him once about the paint. “Furiosa doesn’t use the chalk,” she’d pointed out. “The grease is a symbol of rank - that makes sense. So why do only War Boys paint themselves white?”

“We’re already dead,” he’d said, his tone matter-of-fact. He’d gestured to the scars around his lips. “We make ourselves look like skeletons to show we’re not afraid of dying. Plus, the chalk keeps the sun off.” 

“Are you really?” she’d asked. “Are you really not afraid?”

He’d shrugged. “I got work to do. Try not to think on it, is all.”

Looking at him now, the difference couldn’t be more stark. Joe had been terrified of death, so afraid of dying that he’d made himself out to be immortan. He’d scoured the Wasteland for women, locking them away to try and produce the perfect heir to maintain his legacy and keep his name alive. He’d been covered in boils and slowly rotting from age and radiation, but he’d drained the blood of healthy humans into his own veins to keep himself alive. Once, he’d looked so ugly that one of the Wives had started sobbing in fear; Capable doesn’t remember her name, but she remembers that Joe had been so angry the girl had been immediately ejected from the Vault. 

Keno is nothing like that. She’s getting more and more certain she’d like him to prove it. 

He’s looking down at her now, patiently waiting for an answer, but she can see his pulse thudding in his throat. 

“Of course it’s a compliment,” she says, her heart suddenly pounding. “I mean, I know you were taught he was the one who grabbed the sun, but he was so _cruel_ , and you’re _not_ , and-”

“Capable…” He sounds almost desperate. “I like you. I do. And I get it that Joe hurt you, and… I dunno. Some part of him’s always going to be there in your head. I just-” He looks back down the hallway, at Ello’s retreating figure. “Can we talk about this later?”

He’s so concerned and earnest she almost presses her lips against his, but he’s on his way out and she’s not so sheltered she doesn’t know how a kiss will scramble a man’s head. Instead, she just ducks her head to hide a smile and says, “Yeah.”

Keno twitches a little like he’s fighting back the urge to dance. “That’s, um. That’s _really_ shine.” He darts forward and kisses her forehead, and then backpedals down the hall, calling out, “...yeah, I’ll be careful!” 

She shakes her head and makes a shooing motion. “Just don’t fall off.”

He waves her off, grinning like a fool. 

****

Life at the Citadel being what it is, they don’t get to talk until almost five days later. Keno’s wrapped up in repairs on the rig, and Capable is...well, it seems like she spends all of her time walking around and talking to everyone. She doesn’t have any kind of permanent job, not like Cheedo in the Vault, Toast with the War Boys or Dag with her plants. Instead, if Dag needs more piping for an irrigation project, Capable talks to the Repair Shop. If the Repair Shop is low on a certain type of lubricant, she talks to Dinks, the quartermaster, and if that doesn’t work, she talks with Jilly, from the kitchens, to see if any of the cooking oils might work instead. She listens to Plenty and the milk mothers about the growing Pups, helps arrange some makeshift furniture for the new school. She makes sure she’s around when Cheedo and Dag talk medicinal herbs. She rolls bandages and wraps leaking pipes and takes her turn chasing the crows away from newly-planted seeds. She sorts salvaged ammunition with Toast and Amy, and keeps a careful record of everything. 

She wants to help the Wretched. The outfall pipes have been modified so not as much water is wasted, and she’d really like to build some sort of communal reservoir down below, but the vast majority of the Wretched defy reason. Their desperation is so extreme it’s made them feral, and no amount of negotiation can penetrate. She’s been down among them three times, and all three times ended with torn clothes and War Boys dragging her back up onto the safety of the lift. 

“They en’t people no more,” Ace tells her, the third time it happens. “All they know is need, and it’s warped ‘em like the heat. Feed ‘em, and they’ll eat until they explode.”

“They _are_ people,” Capable snaps, frustrated tears pricking at her eyes. “If we just helped them enough-”

“Some of ‘em, yeah, they still got their wits. Sometimes they got something useful to trade, milk or muscle. But the rest will shred you for your charity.” He eyes her ripped trouser leg. “They’ll take all you give ‘em, and choke to death on it.”

“That’s not true. Furiosa, he’s wrong! Tell him he’s wrong!” 

But Furiosa’s jaw is set, and she won’t look at either of them. 

****

It doesn’t really feel like she’s doing anything, until one day Ello is complaining to Toast about the quality of the latest batch of engine coolant, and Capable snaps, “It’s not Dinks’s fault. Gastown’s reduced the amount of propylene glycol it’s manufacturing. She tested it; it’ll be fine if you didn’t run so close to your redline.” The words just flow out, as if she knows everything about coolant and Gastown and Dinks’s supply chain, and she realizes that she sort of _does_. 

Ello blinks, and Toast elbows him. “Better learn how to shift.”

He glowers. “Bitch, I can shift. Just like the roar, is all.”

“That roar’s going to make you overheat,” retorts Toast. 

“I _know_ my redline-”

“Yeah, you’re up to your nuts in it-”

“I can drive!”

“Not _well_ -”

He swings at her, but Toast is quicker, and before Capable can blink, Ello’s groaning on the ground. 

Toast smirks. “Don’t damage the goods.”

“Fucking _hate_ you.” But he’s climbing to his feet and she’s offering him a hand, and Capable grins, because her tiny, fierce sister has somehow acquired an entire cadre of older brothers, and it’s about an even match. 

Later, she’s alone in the Salon, working on her notes for the day, when Keno comes in, wiping the grease off his hands. “You free?” he asks. 

“Almost done.” She gestures to the plate of food. “Please eat something. Mari and Cheedo were supposed to be here, but Tam’s baby’s giving her trouble. How’s the rig?”

“Transmission’s _fucked_.” He flops down beside her. “Gotta machine up new _everything_.”

“Again?”

“Still.” He examines grubby fingernails. “I wish we had the proper Rig. Even smashed up, it’d be right chrome. This rig’s rusted through.”

She thinks of Nux, engulfed in fire and entombed in steel. “I don’t even know if it would still run.”

“I could fix it.” He shakes his head. “Well. If we could get it, I could fix it.” He looks over at her. “How’s the Council?”

She shrugs. “It’s strange. When the Buzzards first attacked, I thought for sure it was going to be like the siege.” She dreams about the siege sometimes, nightmares where Amy is shoving a rifle at her, but the cartridges are too big for the channel and Capable can’t seem to get it loaded. She swallows hard. “It’s not been like that. Furiosa and the War Boys - and you and your crews - are doing everything possible, and I’m so grateful.

Keno rolls his shoulders, uncomfortable with the praise. “War Boys do War, Repair Boys fix ‘em up so they can go back out. It’s what we do.”

“I don’t feel like I’m helping as much as I could, but I don’t know what else I should be doing.”

His eyebrows jump. “You’re making sure the Citadel keeps going. You keep us in food and water. That’s big.” 

“I’m hardly doing that much-”

“You know about engines,” Keno says. “They need pistons and gears, sure. But pistons and gears don’t work without lube. They seize up. Parts stick. Cams get bent, shafts crack and break. Get grease or graphite in there, it all works smooth.” He’s looking at her fondly, lips quirked. “You don’t even know, do you?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve been looking at crop data all evening; my head’s full of numbers, and you’re not making sense-”

“I’m a gear,” he says. “There’s others like me. Any blackthumb can do what I do. But you - you’re the grease. You…” he makes some vague, swirling hand motions, “you get in there and you keep it running.”

Capable makes a small noise of protest, but he shakes his head. “You _do_. You were in the Vault, so maybe you don’t know, but before Dinks, there was Goon, and Goon played favorites. You had to be in with an Imperator to get even a lump of salvage, and if you weren’t, you’d starve. Now, we talk to Dinks and Dinks talks to you and you talk to _whoever_ , and we get what we need. Not more, not less.” He frowns. “You really don’t know?”

She can feel the heat in her cheeks. “That’s not- the others are- we’re all doing things-”

Keno grabs at her hands before she can tuck them away. “You’re so- Sorry. I just mean you make everything better. And I _like_ you. I like seeing you around. I like it when you come into the garage.” He takes a gulp of air. “I know Joe hurt you, and I don’t _ever_ want to hurt you, but sometimes, I can’t help it, I just…”

“What? What’s wrong?” Because he’s _sweating_ , his palms slick against hers, and his anxiety is making her own heart pound. 

“I want to kiss you,” he says.

For a moment, there’s no sound, as if the entire world has stopped spinning. 

The expression on his face is one of a man ready for the firing squad, resolute and resigned, and he soldiers on. “I thought you should know. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you, maybe I shouldn’t even _want_ to tell you, because maybe it’s not what _you_ want, but that day in the hall, I thought-”

“You want to kiss me.” There’s a sudden war in her chest, all exploding rockets and shrilling artillery, and it comes out as a hitch in her voice. 

“I _won’t_ ,” he says fiercely. “Say you don’t want to, and I’ll never mention it again. I’ll stay away from you, I won’t bother you-”

“You,” Capable tells him, “are not Joe.” The air is suddenly too thin and warm, and the only way to relieve the tension is by touching his face. She leans forward. “I would very much like to kiss you.” 

Keno smells like chalk and guzzoline, and his mouth is warm and certain.

They kiss for a long time.


	89. Chapter 89

The latest run to Gastown is a success. They only fight two Buzzards, two light pursuit vehicles that turn around and run back into the dunes. 

There are no deaths, and when she gets back to the Citadel, Furiosa is staggering with relief. Once she’s out of the cab, she grabs the nearest War Boy - Nifter - and clunks her forehead against his. “Good run,” she tells him, and he lights up from the unexpected praise. 

It’s been fifty-one days since Max left, and she’s somehow still alive. 

The constant threat of Buzzard invasion has given her a strange sort of purpose. She’s a weapon, and they’re a threat, and so she does what she does best: she drives and shoots and plots and bludgeons, and in fifty-one days, only two of her War Boys have died. She works on the rig and listens to Keno angst about the transmission. She collects scrap when she can. 

When it’s quiet, she breathes, listening to the hollow rush of air in her lungs. She folds herself up like a bit of cloth, tucking herself away, like the map Max kept hidden in his jacket. She remembers being sick and wrapped up in leather, exploring the pockets when he wasn’t around. It felt like spying, especially when she found the map and smoothed the careworn fabric across her knees; it wasn’t until much later she’d understood how great a gift that trust had been. 

She’d been starving for warmth then, and his jacket hadn’t been enough, and now that the seasons have turned, the cold feels like nothing. She doesn’t know if the winters are growing more harsh, or if the climate is just milder in her memory. The ever-present wind kicks up, forcing Dag and her greenthumbs to get creative about protecting the fragile seedlings on the terrace. They stretch cloth across the terraces to shade the tiny green things from the worst of the afternoon sun, and tuck thick compost around the roots to warm them during the cold desert nights. 

Despite the wind, despite the thin soil and the brutal solar radiation, the crops are growing. The salvaged canola and amaranth have already made it to harvest, and Capable and her counterparts spend hours calculating crop yields and trying to determine how many people the harvest can support. Furiosa attends the Council meetings, offering bare facts when questioned, but unable to summon the energy to speak unprompted. 

It’s been fifty-seven days since Max left. 

Sleep is still a tenuous thing. She’s fallen into a predictable pattern of stolen naps during the day, and long hours in the garage after dark. When she’s so exhausted she’s shaking, she crawls into the cab of the rig, wrapping herself in a thick Vuvalini blanket to ward off the damp chill. Somehow, her body knows when others are around, and she wakes up before she starts screaming; the War Boys are so accustomed to night fevers that if she does make noise, Ello or Ace will give her a hard shake without any accompanying judgement. 

It’s been sixty-four days since Max left. 

In between runs, she bundles up and hunkers down in the sniper’s nest. She used to love sniping; it was an excuse to get away from everyone, to settle her nerves and let the outside world disappear. Now, her nerves are frayed, her whole body trembling with fatigue, and she finds her scope drifting from the road out to the west. The Bullet Farm’s lights blink in the distance, and beyond that is the empty Wasteland, the shadow of purple mountains fading into the horizon. 

The vehicles she sees aren’t the ones she’s looking for. She doesn’t know what he’ll be driving, but somehow, she thinks she’ll recognize it when she sees it. Somehow, his cloud of dust, the bounce of the chassis over the dune, the shape of the engine cover...something will have an intangible _Maxness_ that she’ll know. It has to.

It’s been seventy-six days. He’s been gone for twice as long as he’d stayed. She’s hardly spent any time in her room at all; the little plant on her desk, the one in the tin can that he kept watered, has withered. 

She compresses herself into the small space between her ribs, swallowing back anything but meticulous, oiled efficiency.

She’s starting to wonder if she was just a resting place, a moment of safety in his otherwise tumultuous life. She’d thought they’d had a connection, that somehow being together made life more bearable for both of them. He’d ridden into the salt and clasped her hand and convinced her that _going back_ was her redemption. She’d agreed with him then, because he was going to be coming with her, and if he was willing to back to the place he was tortured, she could at least do the same. 

And then he’d run, which she supposed she’d understood, because being back amid the white paint and dank halls had made her want to run, too, but she’d dug in her heels anyway. Weeks later, he’d materialized right in the middle of battle, coming out of the smoke like the hero in one of Miss Giddy’s stories, and he’d _stayed_. They’d faced the nightmares together. They had almost-

He’d wanted her. He’d made that clear. If she’d kissed him, if she’d let him fuck her, maybe-

She gives herself a hard shake. She isn’t that sort of person. She isn’t really a person at all; she’s a weapon, a vehicle, a tool to be used and given direction. Max isn’t a person either; he’s a bundle of raw instinct, wild as a dog and twice as feral. He leaves and she stays. It’s just who they are. 

She wonders if he’s dead, if he’s been caught by the killing cold of the Wasteland night. She rests her chin on the butt of the sniper rifle, the freezing metal biting hard into her skin, and wonders what he’s driving, if he’s got enough guzzoline, if he’s got enough water. 

None of this is productive.

It’s been eighty-one days. 

The only time she feels alive is when she’s behind the wheel. The rig doesn’t go out on every patrol; it’s far too valuable and heavy, and she chooses to commandeer Riz’s modified wagon instead. They’ve salvaged a decent number of vehicles from the Buzzards, and while they’re rusty pieces of shit compared to the gleaming cars of Joe’s armada, they’re functional and fast, and every War Boy who can drive gets one. She feels the adrenaline start to seep through her system the moment she locks her wheel into the steering column, the buzzing excitement that fills her mouth like blood. On one patrol, she cuts a corner a little too close and flips her car, and has to be towed back to safety. 

Back in the garage, Ace ignores her bleeding nose and peers into her eyes, his face twisting with concern. “Where’s your head, Boss?” he mutters, quietly enough that no one else can hear. 

The urge to punch him passed weeks ago. She licks away blood and meets his gaze. “I’m still here,” Furiosa says quietly, and she can’t tell if the ache in her chest is rage or resignation.

It's been ninety days.


	90. Chapter 90

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus. 90 chapters. You all are insane for sticking with me this far, and I love you for it. 
> 
> We're almost done with the angst, I promise. (Well, this particular flavor.) Next chapter, maybe. (That's not a tease. That's me wondering if the stitching will work.)
> 
> I love you all. (Those of you doing NaNoWriMo - what are you doing here??? Go work on your novel! Go, write, win!)

The harvest brings a flurry of activity. In addition to the usual tending, the harvested crops require preparation and storage. The kitchens are a flurry of activity as the canola seeds are pressed and the oil extracted and stored. The amaranth gets used on an as-needed basis; when it’s cooked into hard bars, it stores well, but left unprocessed in the damp Citadel store rooms, it molds quickly. 

“These crop yields are incredible,” Capable says, grinning at Dag over the top of her ledger. 

Her sister shifts uncomfortably, her round belly bumping against the edge of the table. She’s five months along, and increasingly grumpy. “Would have been better if we hadn’t been burned out. Schlangers.”

“Still. You’re a marvel.” 

Nakmin reaches over and pats Capable’s hand. “Couldn’t have done it without your support.”

“I’m just thrilled to have some new supplies to cook with,” Jilly says. “And I’m sure the starving masses are thrilled to have something besides shrivelled potatoes.”

Furiosa comes to see them less and less. She’s blending into the War Boys as surely as if she’d never left; The crew goes to Gastown, and has to fight through an armada of Buzzards on the way back. They drive into the garage glowing and triumphant. 

One time, she goes on patrol and comes back on a tow chain with a busted front tire and a bloody nose. The fluid is bright against her pale skin. Capable is cataloguing tools with Keno, and she sees Ace lean in close, sees Furiosa shake her head and lean forward to stanch the flow. The angles of her shoulders are as harsh as jagged lines of the Buzzard car being broken down in the corner, her eyes fever-bright and glittering like the sparks raining from Maz’s torch. 

“Does, um, does the Boss talk with you?” Keno asks sometime after that, during a few stolen moments together over yesterday’s millet cakes. 

Capable remembers the time he’d walked into the Salon, the night Cheedo had asked Furiosa about Katie. It’s been weeks since Furiosa joined them. “Why do you ask?”

“Ace is worried.” He shakes his head. “I mean, course he won’t say, but you don’t get places not reading an Imperator’s ace. Probably shouldn’t say, but...need to get the Buzzards off our backs. Everybody’d get a little more sleep”

“We’ve been over and over it,” Capable says. “They’re coming from the Buried City. We don’t have the manpower to go after them, and we have no way of knowing how many of them are there.” She’s sent several letters to the Actuary of Gastown, entreating him to devote War Boys and vehicles to the defense of the road, but his replies have been impassive. “Toast and Furiosa agree they’re only going after us. The mines are only placed on our side. Gastown doesn’t see how they’ll benefit by helping us out. It’s like they’re just messing with us just because they can. We need to _do_ something.” The Wretched, exposed and vulnerable, have hunkered down in their holes and pressed against the sheer walls of the Citadel. Almost a hundred have been brought up and integrated into the work crews, but...there just isn’t the food yet. The crops were a success, and the Keeper’s heirlooms are taking root beneath Dag’s watchful eye, but after days of painful discussion, the Council reluctantly voted to only accept a few refugees from below. It claws at Capable’s heart, but she understands the logic. The Buzzards need to go.

It’s not just about the Buzzards disrupting the fragile peace. It’s also about Furiosa. Furiosa is the fulcrum on which the entire world turns. Angharad was the catalyst, the bright spark that ignited everything, but Furiosa was the one who arranged their escape, the one who did the driving and shooting. She was the one who told them about the Green Place, that first conversation teased out like a slowly-unfurling leaf. Without her, they would all still be slaves. Now, even with the constant harrying by the Buzzards, the new Green Place is blooming, and somehow, Furiosa isn’t. 

Despite all the sunlight and water and care, Furiosa is withering. Max has been gone for three months, and every single day, Capable has watched Furiosa withdraw. Cheedo initially labeled it a broken heart, but it’s more than that, Capable knows it is; in her heart, Capable thinks it’s because Furiosa hasn’t allowed herself to fit. She’s resisting the new world order for reasons Capable still can’t suss out. 

“She doesn’t see herself as one of us,” Capable says to Toast later that night. She leans her head on her sister’s shoulder. They’re in the Salon, as usual, Mari and Amy on the bed in the corner teaching Dag how to make baskets from dried canola stalks. “Whatever happened when she was a Wife, she thinks she’s not one of us.”

“She was a War Boy for longer,” Toast says, carding her fingers through Capable’s long red curls. 

“She killed her crew to get us out,” Dag points out, a half-made basket perched on her belly.

“Why can’t she just be herself?” Cheedo asks. She’s got one of her heavy medical texts balanced on her knees, her hair pulled back with her striped Vuvalini headband. “She doesn’t have to be a former anything. She can just be Furiosa.” 

“She doesn’t know who she is,” Mari says quietly. “Best we can do is keep moving, eh?”

The pressure inside Capable’s chest is too much. “We’ve _done_ that! It’s not _working_.”

Mari shares a glance with Amy. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” the latter says, and then sighs. “But I’d guess not a one of you’s seen a horse before.”

Cheedo frowns. “It would drink if it’s thirsty.”

“Horse is for eating,” mutters Toast. 

“Not the point,” says Amy. 

Toast suddenly tugs a hank of Capable’s hair. “You’ve got _white paint_ behind your ear,” she crows. 

“ _Keno_!” Cheedo gasps, delighted. She claps her hands. “Oh, that’s so _naughty_.”

“Shadow time,” Dag observes wickedly. 

“You owe us details,” Toast says, poking at Capable’s ribs. 

Capable just hums to herself and grins. 

Later, they’re still working on baskets when there’s a light knock on the doorframe. “I don’t want to interrupt,” Furiosa starts, but Cheedo jumps in, waving her inside: “No! No! Come in!”

“There’s biscuits,” adds Capable, pointing to the table. 

Furiosa shakes her head. “I’m just here for a quick moment. I needed to check on Klash, but he’s asleep.”

Cheedo immediately sits up. “I told him not to use that hand for another seven days. It’s just a sprain, but he needs to keep it wrapped or it’ll get worse.” She glances at Mari, who nods approvingly. 

“At least it’s not broken.” Furiosa breathes a sigh and scrubs a hand at her good eye, the one not gone dark and cloudy. “Thanks for taking care of him.”

“Stay with us,” Dag says. “It’s been ages since we’ve seen you.”

“You don’t even have to talk,” Cheedo adds. “I mean, unless you want to.”

“Can’t. I need to get back to the garage-” 

“Furiosa, stay,” Mari says. There’s a note of motherly command in her voice, kind and irrefutable, but Furiosa just shakes her head. 

“Ello’s car’s giving him fits,” Furiosa says tiredly. “I’ve got twelve green War Boys, and ten hours of work to do in the next three. I’m hardly an initiate, and that tone doesn’t work on me anymore. I’ve skinned men alive for less.”

Cheedo hiccups, swallowing back a nervous titter, but Furiosa does not look like she’s joking. 

“We might be at war,” Mari says gently, “but it’s okay to take a moment to remember who you are.” 

There’s an electric charge through the air like someone’s flipped a swtich. Furiosa goes stiff and still by the door. 

“Seven thousand days,” she says, the words deceptively bland. “I was here alone for seven thousand days. You’ve been here for one hundred and fifty-six.” She doesn’t even hesitate on the numbers, doesn’t have to stop and calculate. She knows exactly how many days, because she’s been counting for most of her life. “Don’t tell me to remember who I am. I have _never_ forgotten.” Her voice cracks on the emphasis, reddening eyes firmly fixed on the wall behind Mari’s head. 

“Furi, no, that’s not what she meant-” Capable tries, because she can feel the tension of the room rising in her ears like an oncoming storm. 

“You couldn’t come get me, so I had to fend for myself,” Furiosa continues through gritted teeth. “Everything I’ve done...I did it to survive. If someone hit me, I fucking _killed_ them. I made them afraid of me, because I was so fucking alone. I had no backup. I had no sisters with guns. I had no one watching my back.” She meets Mari’s eyes. “I know exactly what I am, and you can fuck off.”

Mari frowns, regally calm, and after a moment of brutal silence, Furiosa stalks out of the room. 

“Well done,” Amy mutters. 

“Girl’s a loaded grenade,” Mari snaps back, and then puts down her basketry to rub at her face. “Oh, mothers, she’s stubborn as Jo Bassa and twice as angry.”

“Can’t we do something?” Cheedo asks, pressing her shoulder against Dag’s. Dag silently nibbles on her own fingers.

There isn’t anything anyone _can_ do, Capable thinks. Furiosa is a hard knot of scar tissue and pain, and Max was the only one she’d let near. It hits her then, that this is why Furiosa is withering: she still doesn’t trust any of them to have her back. The War Boys are vestiges of Joe’s rule. The former Wives are weak. The Vuvalini abandoned her. None of it can be conscious - Furiosa is far too practical for that - but somewhere, the doubt is lurking, and for whatever reason Max was the only person she’d felt she could trust. 

She thinks of the certainty of her sisters, of Keno, his firm and gentle hands and warm mouth. She wants that for Furiosa. She’s coming to understand that peace isn’t something that happens when all conflict has ceased; it’s something that must be pursued and cultivated, cared for like the tender herbs in Dag’s garden. 

She wonders how she can help Furiosa understand.


	91. Chapter 91

There is nothing like kissing Keno. It’s been forty-three days; Furiosa isn’t the only one to count days, and Capable keeps each day tucked close her chest, a warmly glowing talisman for the bleak moments when she’s overwhelmed or angry by the unfairness of the world. They’ve both been so busy it’s hard to find time alone, and when they do, it’s sometimes easiest to just sit in the quiet of a stairwell or empty room, wrapped around each other with the innocence of Pups. 

They haven’t gone any further than kissing, and Capable is grateful for that. Keno seems pleased enough just to have his fingers woven into the thick ropes of her hair. They kiss until their mouths are chapped and red, their bodies thrumming with languid bliss. When she’s kissing Keno, she feels like a perfect note played on the Vault’s old piano, golden and pure.

They kiss until they’re both breathless and squirming, until the white of his paint rubs onto her face and clothes and the true color of his skin shines through, dark and rich as fresh, damp earth. He tastes like chalk and sweat and grease, and his body is warm and strong. She’s been touched by men before, and she’s constantly amazed and grateful for how gentle he is: Keno touches her like he touches the vehicles, with a careful confidence and a mindfulness that makes her melt. He’s respectful of her boundaries and hyper-alert to the moments when Joe bubbles up in her mind, and she has close her eyes and remember how to breathe. He gives her space when she needs it, which makes her all the more eager to get back into his arms. 

He’s sensitive about his lumps. He’s got a few on his chest, a cluster behind one ear. The first time she accidentally brushed her fingers over one, he’d made a strangled noise and twitched away. 

She’d apologized profusely, and then quietly asked, “Does it hurt?”

He’d shaken his head, absently poking at the largest bulb behind his ear. “Nah, it’s just...it’s fine, but I don’t...I’d rather...you’re full-life...”

She’d suddenly understood, and pulled his hands into her own. “I don’t care about that.” Leaning forward, she’d gently kissed the lump under his collarbone. 

“It...doesn’t bother you any?”

“Not if it doesn’t bother you.” 

The distant promise of Valhalla was nothing compared to the blaze of his kiss. 

****

Maybe it’s just the success of the harvest and the flush of Keno warm on her lips, but Capable is determined to get through to Furiosa. The women aren’t road warriors, but they don’t need to be. Winning a war means keeping bellies fed and children safe just as much as it means killing enemies. 

Angharad would have been better at this. Angharad could use words with the delicacy of a scalpel or the blunt force of a sledgehammer, and it was useless to argue against her. They’d fought in the Vault, all of them, pulling and straining against the delicate bonds Miss Giddy tirelessly wove between them. When Furiosa came, Angharad had immediately gone to war, alternately spitting accusations and teasing out conversation. Looking back, Furiosa had been completely unprepared for this kind of onslaught - of course she had, if she’d spent the last seven thousand days keeping to herself - and inevitably crumbled beneath Angharad’s relentless pressure. 

Capable _misses_ Angharad. The world is much too quiet, much too complacent. Angharad was a blaze of light, splendid as the nuclear blasts that destroyed the world, beautiful and deadly. She was a queen among slaves, and if anyone could be the goddess to Joe’s god, it could only have been Angharad. 

Capable isn’t anything like her. She’s just a person, a mere mortal with dirt beneath her fingernails and a messy need to heal others burning in her heart. She compromises when she has to, even though Angharad’s voice rings through her skull, strident and critical.

Angharad got through to Furiosa. Capable isn’t Angharad, but she has to try. 

It’s been three days since the outburst in the Salon, and Furiosa is actively avoiding everyone. She’s in the garage when she’s not conducting patrol runs, and twice this week, her crew has hauled back the broken hulk of a trespassing Buzzard. The War Boys are starting to adjust, the newest ones gaining a feel for War, and are starting to hit their stride. Ace just looks annoyed, stalking around as if the Buzzards are out to personally inconvenience him, and Furiosa...Furiosa looks tired. 

Max might never come back. Max might be _dead_ , and even if he is alive, Capable knows better than to depend on others for her own salvation. 

Furiosa has to eat, and the only place to get hot food is from Jilly. Capable settles herself at a table in the dining hall, spreading out her ledgers and doing the recording she usually does in the Salon at night. Within ten minutes of sitting down, there’s a Pup snuggled in her lap, sound asleep and drooling on her shoulder. She rocks the child as she works, one arm tucked around the warm, solid body. 

It’s blissful, holding a child in her arms. She’s always loved it, and whenever she can, she visits the Pups and talks with the milk mothers. 

Maybe she and Keno could even - but it’s too soon to even _think_ like that, and she bites her lip, feeling a pleasant, prickly heat creep into her cheeks. 

In the end, she doesn’t even have to seek Furiosa out. Joe’s former Imperator comes in when she’s not looking, and drops into the seat across from her with two plates of mashed vegetables. “You’ve got your hands full,” Furiosa says, nodding to the somnolent Pup and sliding one of the plates across the table. She looks down at her hands, metal and flesh twined together, measuring her words. “I also owe you an apology.”

Capable shifts the Pup on her shoulder. “You don’t owe me anything, Furiosa. You know that.”

“I shouldn’t have shouted. I shouldn’t - and not at _Mari_...” Her voice trails off, and she takes a shaky breath. “I’m not...I’m not _good_ at this.”

“You don’t have to be,” Capable says gently. “Look, I know there’s a lot going on, but you have our support. Whatever you need us to do, we’re ready.”

It’s late morning, sometime between the breakfast and lunch rush. The dining hall is almost empty, but Furiosa still blinks and looks up at the ceiling, her eyes gleaming wetly. 

“You don’t have to answer, but I need to ask.” Capable leans forward a bit, cradling the Pup’s head with one hand. “Why can you trust Max, but you can’t trust us?”

For a moment, Capable thinks Furiosa is going to bolt. She’s holding herself as stiffly as if she’s expecting a physical blow, or trying to keep from lashing out. “Joe named me Imperator,” she finally says. “I am not...the things I’ve done…”

Capable rocks the Pup and waits patiently. 

“Max knows the Wasteland,” Furiosa manages. “He knows what that means.”

“If we thought you were just an Imperator, we wouldn’t have gone with you,” Capable says. 

“I would have _taken_ you.” She grits her teeth. “I did it to _hurt him_ , don’t you get it? It wasn’t for you, it was for _me_ -”

“Perhaps you did,” Capable says gently, “but it still got us out, didn’t it?”

Furiosa shakes her head. “You should hate me. You should-”

“It’s done,” Capable repeats. “And you’re here, and we’re here. We’re making this place our own, and you’re an integral part of that. We want you here with us.”

“You shouldn’t-”

“That’s not for you to say.” Capable cocks her head. “Do you not want to be here with us?”

Furiosa doesn’t answer; if possible, she’s clenched even more tightly. 

“Because if you don’t, that’s okay. Some days, I don’t want to be here either. It doesn’t matter was Ace says. He isn’t your boss. There are no bosses anymore, not like before.” She reaches across the table and brushes her knuckles against Furiosa’s. “Furi, if you need to go, if you need to find Max or just get some space...you should.”

Furiosa is a tightly-wound coil, her whole body trembling. She tucks her prosthetic under her human arm, reflexively hugging herself. “I don’t know what I need,” she admits, her voice rough and almost inaudible. “I can’t…I don’t know.”

“This isn’t a prison,” Capable says. “Not for anymore. Not anymore.”

“The Buzzards-”

“If you left, we could figure it out.”

Furiosa shakes her head, sounding strangled. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not now.”

“And I’m saying you could.”

For a long time, Furiosa stares at her lap and doesn’t say anything, and Capable _knows_ she’s thinking about it. She can hear her rough breathing, the bare hitch of repressed tears. Capable knows what freedom tastes like; she’d felt it after the sandstorm, when they’d all crawled out of the War Rig’s produce hatch and washed the dust from their bodies, kicking Joe’s hated chastity belts to the ground. It’s heady and it’s dizzying, as bright and blinding as the sun. 

Finally, Furiosa takes a deep, steadying breath, and scrubs at her face with her human hand. “I don’t know where Max went,” she says quietly. “If I did, then yeah, maybe I’d…but it’s almost suicide, to just go off alone, and I’m not- I’m staying here.”

“It’s not an iron-clad decision,” Capable reminds her. “You can always change your mind.” She swallows. “I mean, let us know before you go, obviously.”

That earns a wet chuckle. “I’m sorry,” Furiosa says. “For everything. I’ve lost track of everything. I’m spinning my wheels-”

“You aren’t, though. You’re just running yourself to bare tread keeping us safe.” Capable reaches over again, and this time, Furiosa hesitantly takes her hand. “Let us have your back. Maybe we can’t shoot like Max, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help.”

Furiosa nods. 

It’s not what Angharad would have said, but, thinks Capable, it’s still good. 

****

That night in the Salon, Amy and Toast are proposing potential baby names for Dag to reject, and Mari is quizzing Cheedo on poison antidotes when Furiosa appears like a ghost in the doorway. 

“I have...nightmares,” she states, her human hand clenched at her side. “So if I fall asleep, I might - I’ll probably start yelling.”

Toast shrugs. “You think you’re the only one? Cheedo kicks.”

“I have to pee all the time,” Dag says. “We’re messy animals.” 

Furiosa does not look comforted. 

“Come sit by me,” Capable entreats, patting the seat beside her. Furiosa does, shyly settling into place. 

“There’s always vegetables,” says Amy. “Knew a gal once called Carrot. She was a ranga, that one, just a huge mop of bright orange hair. Like our girl Capable over there, but… _more_.”

Toast smirks. “How original.”

“Not naming it Carrot,” Dag says. “Nor Beet, if you’re thinking that.”

“Gonna come out looking like one.”

“Or a potato.”

“Yeah, potato.”

Beside her, Capable feels Furiosa slowly relax, the tension bleeding out of her like the gradual clotting of blood.


	92. Chapter 92

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is shorter than I intended, but I need the next section to be absolutely on point, and I wanted this out of my hair.

The explosion happens just before sunrise.

Furiosa has been awake for thirty hours. She’s driven seven patrols; early in the third one, they’d seen the Buzzards retreat back into the dunes, and since then, there’s only been empty desert. It’s windy and cold and painfully dry. Even with her goggles on and scarf pulled up over her face, it hurts to breathe, the starlight crisp and jagged as steel. 

She’s so exhausted she doesn’t trust her eyes, but she doesn’t trust herself to sleep, either; when she’s tried, curled up in the cab of the rig, she jerks awake almost instantly, gasping as phantom hands squeeze hard around her throat. Instead, she’s wrapped up in a heavy blanket in the driver’s seat, trying to do mileage calculations but losing the numbers in the fog of her brain. Gastown hasn’t agreed to up their guzzoline allotment, so all the fuel has been going straight into engines, with the remainder for cooking and almost none left for heating. The garage is cold and damp, and her breath is clouding the windshield. 

It happens as a low rumble, and for a moment it doesn’t even register, but then the boom hits and it’s unmistakable, and Furiosa is kicking off the blanket and tumbling out of the cab before she even knows she’s moving. 

She almost collides with Ace in the hallway. His grease is smudged down the side of his cheek, like he’s been sleeping on his face. He’s staggering on his feet. “Whazzit? Wazgonon?”

Her brain is about four steps behind her, lugging down like an engine stuck in too high a gear, so she just shakes her head and pushes him toward the catwalks. 

As soon as she’s got elevation, she looks around. The sky is clear and pale, the first rays of sun as orange as a half-remembered peach and just as distant. The Wretched are huddled against the base of the Citadel; some of them are up and looking around, but it was a cold night, and the majority aren’t stirring. 

There’s a dark cloud on the western horizon. The Bullet Farm is burning. 

She turns and runs for the telescope. 

****

Toast is already there, peering into the eyepiece while Amy uses the smaller spyglass. “Can we tell who it is? Are they flying any colors?”

Amy shakes her head. “Unmarked vehicle, but definitely not a Buzzard. Bastard’s fanging it straight for us.”

Furiosa skids to a halt in the crowded room, breathing hard with words clogged in her throat. She can only wave vaguely at the telescope, and Toast grabs her arm and steers her to the eyepiece. “You look,” Toast commands. “Tell me what _you_ think.”

It’s a lone vehicle, something long and low and raising a hell of a cloud of dust. It’s far enough away she can’t see much detail, but suddenly her heart isn’t working, her lungs paralyzed with fearful possibility. 

There’s an unknown threat speeding through the desert and the Bullet Farm is on fire, and she suddenly can’t breathe. Her pulse is a featureless roar in her ears, the car in the eyepiece fading to black. 

“Well, what do you think?”

“Furiosa?”

“Too far.” The words come out like metal scraping metal. She’s grasping at concepts, her transmission slipping as she tries to shift into a usable gear. “It’s too far.” She takes a halting step back from the telescope, as thin and brittle as the air outside. 

“What about the Bullet Farm?” Toast asks. “Did anyone see it?”

“Sito was on watch,” Ello answers. “He saw and got me. Said there was nothing, no activity. Just silence, and then boom.”

“It wasn’t nuclear, was it?” Cheedo asks fearfully. “We’d know, right?”

Ace snorts, and Amy gives her a wondering look. “Girl, we’d all be ash,” the Vuvalini says. 

Cheedo chews her lip. “Could it have been an accident? Do you think they need help?”

Ace frowns. “Speeding car says it’s no accident.”

Toast squints into the eyepiece. “If they need help, they’ll have to signal us. Otherwise, we’re staying put.” She glances to Furiosa. “Right?” 

She feels herself nod, a strange buzzing pulling at the base of her skull. “Scramble the crews. Bullet Farm might follow.” 

“Yes, Boss!”

There’s a flurry of motion as people change places, and someone is guiding her to a chair. 

“Hey,” Capable murmurs, and something heavy and dense drops over her shoulders: a blanket. “You’re white as a sheet.” She peers into Furiosa’s face. “Have you slept at all? When was the last time you ate?”

There are no answers. There is only a vehicle speeding through the desert. She raises her eyes to Capable’s. 

“It might not be Max,” the younger woman whispers, her hands painfully warm around Furiosa’s chilled human fingers. “It might not be him. Are you okay?”

Furiosa is not okay. She has never been okay. That has never prevented her from acting. She takes a shuddering breath and forces herself back into her body. “Make sure Mari and Cheedo are ready,” she rasps. “We might need them.”

****

All proper trade goes through Gastown. The People Eater was much more of a businessman than Joe, so anyone with anything to sell turned south, and even with the warlords rotting in the sun, that hasn’t changed. The lure of the Citadel is the water, the potential to be a treadmill walker or a milker. It isn’t approached by vehicles without invitation. 

This one is alone; if it was involved in the Bullet Farm explosion, it’s not being pursued. It slows down when it reaches the final hill, and winds through the knots of Wretched with a practiced ease. Furiosa watches from the mouth of the skull, her rifle at her shoulder and her finger on the trigger. The car itself looks like a War Boy creation: it’s obviously salvage, repaired for strength and speed with limited materials. The motor has the deep, throaty burble of a well-loved V8. 

“Can you see the driver?” Amy asks, her own rifle up and ready. “You thinking War Boy?”

Furiosa peers through her scope. “Can’t tell.” The car is filthy, but anything is possible. In the garage tower, Ace is waiting for her signal; he won’t lower the lift or open fire until she says so. 

The car noses up to the edge of the lift platform, and the driver cuts the engine. There’s a long pause, and then the driver warily gets out. 

She’s running toward the catwalks before Max even pulls down his scarf.


	93. Chapter 93

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on the bones of this chapter for literally _four months_. 
> 
> I can't believe I'm actually posting it.
> 
> This whole fic is my love letter to this fandom. It's all for you.

Furiosa is a blazing firestorm of jagged rage and brittle relief. She can’t feel her limbs, but she knows she’s moving, her lungs hot and empty as the vacuum of a piston. The girls are hard on her heels.

“She’s bringing her rifle,” Cheedo is saying. “That’s bad. That’s bad, right?”

“She doesn’t need the rifle,” retorts Dag.

“Talk with him,” Capable says urgently, skipping to keep up. “Just talk, okay? Furiosa. You’re going to talk with him. Right? Furiosa?”

She can’t speak; her throat is clenched too tightly, and she’s gritting her teeth. If she makes any noise, it’s going to be a scream, and she’s not certain she’ll be able to stop.

By the time she gets to the garage, the lift is already moving, and the car is rising. “It’s _Max_!” Toast says breathlessly, running up to her. “I told Ace to let him up.”

Ace still has his bolt launcher cocked and ready to fire. “Boss,” he warns. “Could be a trap.”

Furiosa is two engines firing in concert. The roar in her ears is overwhelming, every other sound hollow and distant. She can only nod. Her rifle is slung on her back, her human hand clenched tightly around the cold metal of her spare pistol. She’s not sure what she’ll do; she’s on the knife edge between violence and hysteria, her heart pounding in her throat and the sour taste of bile heavy on her tongue.

Capable grabs her human arm, small fingers needling at her elbow, and Dag presses hard against her other side. “Breathe,” Capable murmurs. “Whatever happens, we’re with you.”

She’s too exhausted to clearly think through the possibilities, but that doesn’t stop her brain from revving to its redline. It’s Max. It’s Max. He’s alive. The Bullet Farm is burning and he’s just driven from the Bullet Farm and it’s been one hundred and two days and he’s _alive_ \- 

And then the lift is sliding into place with a dull clang, and he’s standing there, and she can’t remember how to breathe.

He looks terrible, scruffy and dirty and more than a little malnourished. There’s a bleeding cut on his forehead, and a half-healed scar that trails his cheekbone, vanishing into a thick tangle of stubble. He feverishly scans the garage, squinting in the gloom until he sees her, and then his body sags a little with relief. His empty, rag-wrapped hands hover near his shoulders, and he doesn’t seem surprised at all to have a welcoming committee bristling with weapons. 

Everyone is looking at Furiosa to say something first. The words drag themselves from her throat like rusted chain: “Were you followed?”

He shakes his head with a grunt.

Toast snorts, and tries to cover it with a cough. “Did you just blow up the Bullet Farm?”

He looks startled by the accusation, but frowns, considering. “Mmm…” There’s a quick, jerky nod.

“They’re our allies!” Ello bursts out. 

“They were _Joe’s_ allies,” Toast snaps. “They haven’t even _signalled_ us.”

“He can’t just _blow them up!_ ”

Amy squares her rifle at her shoulder. “I can’t wait to hear about this.” 

Other voices join in the confusion, but Furiosa is numb from her belly to her lips, and arguments can happen later. “Are you back?” she asks. “Are you actually back?” 

He blinks and shakes himself. “It’s, mm. We need to, mm.” The words come out blurred, as if he hasn’t spoken in months. “We need to talk.”

Something bursts in her brain, a sudden, painful aneurysm of rage, and Capable and Dag are both shrieking and pulling at her arm as the pistol comes up. He didn’t want to talk all those days _before_ , and then he _left_ -

Max is fumbling in his jacket, one hand raised as if trying to stave off the bullet. He pulls out something wrapped in dirty cloth, cradling it with a delicacy more suited to an unstable grenade. He holds the bundle out like someone offering a morsel to a starving dog, wary and ready to run if the beast starts to lunge. When Furiosa doesn’t move, he bounces it a little, letting out an impatient little huff.

“This,” he says, almost desperately. “Furiosa. Please.”

She thinks it might be the first time he’s actually said her name. 

Slowly, the white roar in her ears recedes, and it’s a long moment before she can feel her fingers enough to engage the safety; Toast eases the pistol from her hand. Everyone lets out a breath.

Furiosa approaches him slowly, numb legs moving of their own volition. Max dances back as she takes the bundle and folds back the cloth. It’s a seedpod of some kind, the length and breadth of her human hand, cylindrical in shape and blackened like it’s been through a fire. Some of the seeds have been blown open by the heat, little mouths gaping red at their centers. It still smells dense and smoky, as if it carries the memory of its burnt mother forest deep within its resin.

It doesn’t make any sense, and he’s looking at her like there should be a great epiphany, but understanding doesn’t come.

He rolls his eyes and licks his lips, taking a breath to speak. “Called a banksia,” he says, the words sing-songing, as if he’s reciting a half-remembered poem. “Big tree, right. Mmm. Took me awhile to find one.”

He left for a seedpod?

“I know what I said, before. About fixing what’s broken.”

She frowns.

“I thought.” He swallows, hums a little. “Thought once it goes broken, can’t be fixed.” He shrugs. “A man goes mad alone in the waste. Same story all over, mm?”

Furiosa knows that story all too well. “I’m listening.” She hefts the pod from hand to hand, feeling the weight of it transferred up the straps of her prosthetic.

Max points to the pod. “That’s still alive. More than, even. Got to be burnt to, mm, open the pods.” He makes a fist and then stretches his fingers to pantomime an explosion. “Lets the water in so it can grow.” He takes a breath. “It’s not...mm, not a perfect system. The pod...it doesn’t know what needs. Maybe...maybe thinks it’s gonna die.

“Thing is…” He fists his hands beneath his armpits, bouncing a little from one foot to the other. “...sometimes...people are like that, too. Got to burn before things open. Got to, mm, get broken before they heal.”

Her heart is suddenly pounding hard in her mouth, and her mechanical arm - her stump - involuntarily tightens against her ribcage, pressing a metal elbow against the place where he’d stabbed her to make her breathe.

This is an apology.

He’s twitching like he’s prepared to dive off the edge of the lift if things go badly. Max gestures again to the banksia pod. “That’s yours,” he blurts out, and then nods and ducks his head, his eyes flicking toward her as if he can’t quite handle a direct gaze. “I mean. Mm. If you want.”

He wasn’t gone one hundred and two days to find her a banksia. He got scared - she knew that, she’d seen it in his face, seen the moment he’d gone white and ran. He ran and he kept going until he could make himself turn around, and now he’s back. There’s no saying he won’t run again, but he’s standing here like he’s prepared to face a firing squad - scared, his body screaming in protest, but he’s holding his ground. She’s still angry - mothers, she’s never been so angry - but it’s being scoured away by the enduring heat in his eyes.

He’s handed her a burnt seedpod, but he’s offering so much more.

He’s so wound up that sudden movement is absolutely not advised, but she’s quick enough that by the time he reacts, her human hand is fisted hard in his hair, the banksia pod bouncing to the ground. He whines a little with anxiety, but she holds fast.

Before she can change her mind, she presses her lips to his, an awkward mash of dry skin and teeth. She can feel his brain short-circuiting under her hand, a wild spurt of panic, but then something clicks into place and he’s kissing her back with a startling hunger, like she’s water and he’s been thirsty for a thousand days.

They’ve both been thirsty for far too long, both telling themselves they didn’t deserve the water right in front of them.

When they break apart, he looks like she feels - bruised and raw and utterly naked, but he’s as alive and present as if they’re in the middle of a firefight, and she feels exactly the same. This is a fight, she realizes, the most desperate battle he’s ever fought, he’s fighting himself _for her_ , and _she’s_ fighting herself, and they really should be standing side by side.

_Maybe...together...we can find some sort of redemption._

He’s been trying to tell her since that day out on the salt, and she didn’t know, she _couldn’t see_ -

“I’m sorry,” he says breathlessly, chest heaving. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

“It’s okay.” She swallows hard, seven thousand days of loneliness rising in her throat. “It’s all right. We’re all right.”

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes are burning, so she just nods and presses her forehead against his. He palms the back of her head, his thumb tracing a warm pattern on her scalp. He smells like sweat and diesel and leather - how much she’s _missed_ him hits her in the chest like a gunshot, and she’s blown open like the banksia pod at her feet.

“Staying is hard,” he’s saying. “Staying is-”

She kisses him again, partially to shut him up and partially because she’s forgotten how to breathe, and stealing the air from his mouth seems in the moment like a logical thing to do. Everything has gone off-kilter in a sharp, dizzying whirl, and his mouth, soft and tasting like home, is the only thing she knows is real. She’s a raging flood in an unprepared desert; it’s pouring from her eyes and cascading down her face, and all she can do is cling to his jacket and try not to scream.

“Hey,” Max murmurs when they break apart. “Hey.” His fingers fan through her shaggy mass of curls.

“Fool,” she says thickly, and his mouth stretches into something like a grin.

It’s only then they realizes they have an audience. Capable is practically airborne, excitedly slapping at an alarmed Keno and dancing a little as she bites her fist and tries not to squeal. Cheedo leans her head on Dag’s shoulder as they both grin. Ace looks utterly dumbfounded. 

Toast just smirks, and knocks her shoulder against Amy’s. “Told you.”

Amy rolls her eyes, and relaxes her rifle. “Is the Bullet Farm coming after you, boy?” she asks pointedly. “How bad will they want your hide?”

Max blinks, and shakes his head, a quick, jerky motion. “Wasn’t followed.” He looks at Furiosa, his hands tightening on her shoulders as he tries to assemble the words. “Take ‘em awhile to, mm. Regroup.”

“Are you staying?” Furiosa asks hoarsely. “Can you stay?”

There’s no hitch in his reply, no hesitation in his nod. “Yes.”


	94. Chapter 94

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this 150k? I think it is. WHAT.
> 
> I love you people like whoa. I would never have gotten this far without your constant amazing support.

Once the guns come down, the immediate priority is getting Max checked out, because although he’s the most welcome sight Furiosa has ever seen, he also looks like the last hundred days haven’t been his kindest. The cut on his forehead is oozing slowly, and he’s gray in a way that has nothing to do with age or dust. Cheedo’s actually the one to suggest it, gently herding them toward the Vault, because Furiosa is in a daze, her brain sputtering like a starving engine. Max is back, Max is _alive_ , and she can’t quite remember how to be human. 

“Boss, Max...we can check the car,” Keno offers, once Max has driven off the lift and parked in the corner of the garage. “Sounds like one of the spark plugs might be-”

“ _No._ ” Max shakes his head violently. “No one touches the fucking car.”

Keno nods about a thousand times. “Sure thing, sure thing. It’ll stay put.”

“ _No one_ ,” Max growls.

“It’s safe here,” Furiosa intervenes. “You’re safe.”

He looks at her, eyes hooded and dark, and she knows he doesn’t believe her. He knows _she_ doesn’t believe it, either, down in her bones where his blood still flows. . 

He knows her. He sees her. She doesn’t have to hide, doesn’t have to front. The relief feels like crumbling stone in her chest, and when she presses her shoulder against his, his responding pressure is instantaneous. She has a ridiculously childish urge to cling to him, to maintain physical contact just to remind herself he’s real, but she’s not sure she remembers how to touch another person in a way that doesn’t precede violence. 

Her human hand is ice-cold and shaking, and he covers it with his own. 

Up in the Vault, Mari takes one look at him and shakes her head. “About damn time,” she huffs. “Maybe now our girl will actually _sleep_.”

Max gives Furiosa an alarmed look, but she just shakes her head.

Mari isn’t done. “And you, boy. You look like you could use a meal and some sleep yourself. Come here and let me see.” 

As Max warily submits to Mari’s fussing, Furiosa hangs back, hugging herself and trying not to hover, too jittery to sit and too exhausted to pace. 

“Will the Bullet Farm retaliate?” Toast asks. 

Max shakes his head, wincing as Mari dabs some antiseptic on his forehead. “It’s, mm. Long story.”

“Maybe let him rest a bit, before we debrief?” suggests Capable. 

“We need to know if we’re about to get pounded,” Toast retorts. She glances at Furiosa. “ _She’s_ dead on her feet, so that leaves me and Ace to make a plan.”

Furiosa thinks about protesting, but Max squeaks a little as Mari delicately loops the first stitch, and her mouth goes too dry to speak. 

“Leave them both out of it,” Capable says. “Do what you need to do, but he already said he wasn’t followed. They can’t know he came here.”

“There’s hardly any wind, and his tracks come straight to us.” 

“The wind always picks up later.” Dag folds her arms over her belly, and Max’s eyes go huge, as if he’s noticing her condition for the first time. 

“Yeah, but if they’re already on the trail-”

“Take it outside,” Mari says calmly. “Healing happens in here; war talk happens out there.” 

Capable gives Furiosa’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “You should both get something to eat,” she says, nodding to Max. “And then maybe rest a bit? I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

Furiosa nods, painfully grateful. She should refuse, she should talk with Ace and Ello and Toast about the Bullet Farm, but Max is _right there_ , as blistering and searingly bright as the afternoon sun. 

Max whines again as Mari tightens last stitch, and she clucks sympathetically. “There, it’s done. Head wounds always bleed so much; once you get all that blood cleaned off you, you’ll just have another handsome scar.”

He grunts, but his eyes flick up to Furiosa.

She swallows, vague heat creeping into the tips of her ears. Her lips burn with the memory of his mouth, and she feels both breathless and overwhelmed, embarrassed and strung out. 

Mari winds a length of bandage around his forehead, tucking the edge neatly into place. “It’s damn good to see you, boy, but you smell like a corpse. Do something about that, will you?” She hands him a chip of soap, which he holds as gingerly as an egg. 

As Mari bustles about cleaning up, Furiosa edges over. “They’re very neat,” she blurts out. “The stitches are. She’s good. You’ll barely have a scar-”

“Stitched up my shoulder,” Max reminds her, and she falls silent. 

Max’s hand finds Furiosa’s and holds on tight. Neither one of them is physically demonstrative, but she thinks right now he needs the contact as much as she does. He hasn’t stopped staring at her, as if he’s afraid she’s going to disappear at any moment. He’s still not quite meeting her gaze; he’s focused resolutely on her shoulder, eyes darting up to hers and then away. It’s the action of half-remembered fish, the barest flash of scales amid dark, muddy water. 

“Both of you need food,” Mari announces. “And unless we’re under immediate attack, some sleep. Our girl here’s been running on empty for weeks, and you don’t look much better.” Her eyes drop appraisingly to their entwined hands, their knuckles gone white. “Welcome back, Max,” the old Vuvalini says quietly. “You’ve been sorely missed.”

He huffs and squirms a little. 

Before they leave, Mari pulls Furiosa aside and kisses her cheek. “Easy does it, pet,” she murmurs, her words for Furiosa’s ear only. “No sense rushing, eh?”

Her head is whirling so hard, she almost doesn’t understand, and then she _does_ , and mothers help her, she’s blushing like a young girl. 

Mari just winks. 

They go to the dining hall, and end up sitting alone at one of the long tables; Furiosa is pretty sure the girls have passed around strict orders not to bother them, because there is a gaggle of Pups hanging just outside the door, giggling and staring. They bolt when she looks in their direction. 

She’s not hungry, but Max insists they take two plates, and just like he’d done when she was getting over the lung fever, he makes her match him bite for bite.

“You,” he says, gesturing with his fork, “look like hell.”

She’s strung out and exhausted and _angry_ , and above all so very, very glad to see him, and it’s hitting her all at once, like a sandstorm blasting away her skin. “I’m still mad,” she reminds him, as if he can’t see it.

He regards her solemnly. “I know. Have every right to be.”

She is _not_ going to cry. “I’m just…”

So tired.

He hums in sad agreement.

When she can’t possibly eat another bite, he takes their plates and returns them to the kitchen as if he’s always been here, as if he’d never left. She doesn’t realize how close she is to passing out until he hefts her good arm over his shoulder. “Hey...hey. Stay with me, mm?”

Somehow, he still remembers the combination to her room, and she lets him unbuckle her prosthesis. He’s very careful about where his fingers touch her body, the most minimal, chaste contact possible. It’s hardly fair, when he’s close enough she can feel the heat of him in the room’s chilly air. Part of her wants to kiss him again, and keep kissing him until the pain in her chest somehow ebbs; the rest of her can’t decide what to do with her human hand, and so she ends up awkwardly hugging herself. 

Max hums, fidgeting. “Well.” He clears his throat, with a significant glance at the door. “I should, mm...”

“No!” She swallows hard. “Please...don’t. ” It comes out far more plaintive than she intends, and she makes herself add, “I mean. Not if you don’t want.”

“Are you sure?” 

The weight of everything they haven’t talked about is stealing all the air from the room, and she can’t handle his uncertainty. He’s giving her an out, in case sleeping side by side is something she doesn’t want to do, but she’s _so tired_ , and all she wants is his solid, warm body against her own. 

“Fool,” she says, dropping down onto the bed. 

It’s apparently what he was waiting for, because all his hesitation disappears, and after a flurry of motion they’re curled together like two lizards in a nest, her head tucked against his shoulder and his arms tight around her. He smells like one hundred days of sweat and guzzoline and desperation, and the part of him flowing through her veins sings in response. 

She’s missed this. She’s missed _him_. She’s missed him so much it’s a great, gaping ache in her chest, and she takes a breath to inhale his scent, but it comes out ragged and wet.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his breath warm against her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

She means to say that she knows, that it’s something she’ll probably forgive, but she’s already asleep.


	95. Chapter 95

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm, um, not dead. I'm just playing Fallout 4. ~~My camps are amazing and I have no regrets.~~

Cheedo is fond of books, in particular soul-searing romances with gilded leather covers and pages that are sweet with age and decay. When Furiosa was guarding the Wives in the Vault, the girl would read aloud from her favorites, the other women alternately rolling their eyes or cuddling in close to listen. Even tiny, sarcastic Toast and sneering, regal Angharad would linger, far enough away to maintain a veneer of disinterest, but close enough to still hear the story. 

If this were one of Cheedo’s stories, Furiosa would sleep like an innocent, Max’s very presence soothing her into oblivion. 

This is not one of Cheedo’s stories. 

She’s locked in an unusually vivid nightmare - the Buzzards have somehow breached the Citadel, Ace is bellowing and bleeding, and she’s trying to strap her prosthetic into place, but the metal is crumbling like sun-rotted plastic, brittle and useless - when something very real hits her in the sternum. 

Before he’d left, Max and Furiosa’s respective sleep disturbances bruised each other regularly, and she’d gotten somewhat used to being violently awakened. Now, she’s had over a hundred days for the sensation of sleeping next to another person to dissolve back into nothingness, and with the icy desperation of the the nightmare still clouding her brain, all she can do is reflexively lash out and dive off the bed. 

It’s mid-afternoon, the heavy winter sunlight painting the room in orange and rust. It looks like fire, and for a few heart-pounding seconds, she’s sure the roar of flame isn’t just in her ears. Furiosa has her pistol up in her human hand, her stump tucked protectively against her chest. There’s a raw dampness on one of her elbows; it’s probably bleeding, but she’s too flooded with adrenaline to feel the pain. 

Max is also on the ground, wedged against the door with his face gone white. “I...am _so sorry_ ,” he gasps out. “I can...I should go-”

“So fucking _predictable_ ,” she snarls, caught somewhere between blind rage and startled tears. 

His eyes drift back into his head a little, like the shame is too great for his compact body to bear. 

She can still feel the phantom metal flaking off her arm, her weakness exposed and vulnerable. She’s shaken and angry, every nerve shrilling like an overboiled radiator. Max is right there, after days and days of wishing he’d come back, and she’s torn between sobbing with relief and howling with vengeance. 

“Maybe you should.” The words come out like bullets before she can stop them, and she can’t make herself lower the gun. Her muscles are locked in place as if they’re made of steel instead of flesh. “Just keep fucking running. Get in your fucking car and go, just fucking _go_. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going or when you’ll show back up. You said it yourself, you make your own fucking way.”

He makes a strangled noise.

As suddenly as it rose, the fury is gone, leaving aching guilt and a bone-deep weariness in its wake. The gun drops into her lap, and she pinches at her eyes, as if she can somehow physically resist the bitter tears. 

Once, she’d thought maybe she’d find some peace with him, but he’s back, cowering against her locked door, and there is no peace for either of them. She can’t escape the nightmares - it’s the price of the things she’s done, both punishment and penance - and he’s got nightmares of his own. She’d thought she’d recognized some part of herself in him, and he in her, and that the recognition might lead to some kind of redemption...but instead, she thinks maybe they’re too alike, that they’re both blazing fires and they’ll burn each other to ash. 

She’s not sure she isn’t ash already. 

She’d kissed him in the garage, and he’d kissed her back, and she’d _wanted_ that. She’d wanted it before he’d gone, and one hundred days without him hadn’t lessened the want. She still wants to kiss him, even now, and looking at him curled in the corner jars the bruised and tender place deep within her chest. She doesn’t know what she wants from him, except that she wants _something_ , and the sensation is unexpected and overwhelming. 

Once, in Bartertown, she’d seen a man with a hawk bound to his fist with leather straps; at the slightest upset, the bird had screaming, wildly flapping and straining against its ties. More and more these days, she thinks of that hawk, of its helpless, impotent rage. 

“Hey,” Max says, and it’s less a word and more a soft huff of air. His whole body is struggling under the weight of his misery, and it’s leaving him as rumpled as his clothes, as disheveled as his hair. He looks as weary as she feels. 

She makes herself meet his eyes, and for once, he doesn’t twitch away. 

“I am so sorry,” he says, each word carefully and meticulously laid before her. “I’m...if you want me to, mm…”

“Did you come back just because you knew you’d be safe here from the Bullet Farm?”

“Needed to, mm...”

“Spit it out!” 

He rolls the words around in his mouth, every movement forced and painful. “Needed to tell you, see if you were, mm...” He swallows hard. “Bullet Farm is supplying the Buzzards.”

The stone beneath her is suddenly very cold and very solid. There’s a high, thin buzzing in her ears. 

“Needed to tell you,” he repeats. “Slowed ‘em for a bit - you must’ve seen - but this peace you got...it’s, mm.” His face twists in anguish. “The whole Wasteland is out for blood, and the Citadel is a pretty target.”

“How?” Her engines are all out of sync, transmissions whining piteously as she tries to find the right gear. “For how long?” And, just as important, _who_. She’d killed Atrox. She’d killed the other Imperators. Joe and his sons are dead. The Bullet Farmer is dead. There isn’t anyone _left_ who could summon an army against her. There’s still a handful of War Boys left from the Armada, Boys who survived the siege and stayed with Atrox at Gastown. She’d assumed they’d been absorbed into the Gastown machine, abandoning their white paint and black grease for sulfur yellow and dusty masks. 

They hadn’t been her crew, but she hadn’t thought they could be a threat on their own, not without an Imperator to lead them. 

Max shakes his head. “Couldn’t get close enough. Got in long enough to hurt ‘em, but I don’t know their end game.” One of his hands drifts up toward the back of his neck, fingering the brand at his nape. “I came when I could.”

There is so much she suddenly needs to know, and beneath it is the quivering urge to throttle him, to shake him until every last bit of information spills free. That won’t work - she knows it won’t - and he still looks completely wrecked. He isn’t exactly loquacious even on his best days, and today is far from good for either of them. 

She scrubs her human hand across her face, swallowing hard against seven thousand days of pain that isn’t Max’s fault and isn’t Max’s to bear. “We need to make some plans,,” she says quietly. “Are you willing to talk with Council?”

He nods once, a jerky motion. 

“Can we do it now?” She looks down at the gun in her lap. “I, um. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep-“

He visibly collects himself, tucking his panic back in a way that’s all too familiar. “Gonna be a hard day,” he tells her. 

“It always is.” 

But they still keep moving.


	96. Chapter 96

“How is it,” Capable says, arms crossed over her chest, “that we sent you both to bed hours ago, and you look worse than ever?”

Cheedo makes a choking noise, rolling her eyes in scandalized delight. Toast gives her a hard nudge, muttering, “Don’t be such a child.”

Max ducks his head. 

“You’re bleeding,” says Mari, snagging Furiosa’s elbow. She clicks her tongue, steering the younger woman to a chair. “Let’s get that cleaned up, eh?” 

She does not ask what happened.

The Council room is almost exactly as he’d last seen it, the day Furiosa stood where he’s standing and told them what she knew about Gastown. The only change is that a small plate of what look like biscuits or cakes near the center. Capable sees him look at them, at the irrepressible tremor that runs through him, and slides the plate in his direction. 

The cakes are an explosion of crumbly goodness in his mouth. 

The milking mother called Plenty cocks her head. “The Wastelander,” she says. “Wondered when we’d see you again. What do you have to tell us?”

Max talks. 

He’s not good at talking. The sentences that are perfectly composed and clear in his head somehow come out mangled, broken into mumbling shapes that have the taste and weight of stone. It’s better if he’s had a little bit to unwind, a chance to practice at being human again, but he’s been in the desert for so long, knotted hard with shock and shame, and as he stands in front of the Council, he shoves his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking. 

He didn’t mean to stay away. 

(He didn’t mean to _run_.)

It’s just...the howling didn’t stop. Not like he’d thought it would. He’d come back to himself slowly, touching his face one day and feeling his fingers sink into thick, rough hair. Even now, the static fills his head, a dissonant whine that sets his teeth on edge and harries his already-frayed nerves. 

Mari is wrapping a bandage around Furiosa’s elbow with quick, practiced motions, and in the movement Max is suddenly flooded with the memory of the Buzzard tractor roaring down, Furiosa out of space and out of time-

He clenches his fists, reminding himself to breathe. As out of sync as they are, Furiosa still reflexively looks over at him, eyes gone soft with concern. 

He doesn’t want to - no, that’s not right. He wants to, but it’s _hard_ , and he’s been solitary for so long that any kind of telling seems like a betrayal. But he tells them anyway. 

If he were doing a proper telling, he’d start with the running. He’d tell them about the car, about going to retrieve it from the path of that last, desperate run. It’s his car, like his jacket one of the last vestiges of his previous life; he pulls the skeletons from its chassis and starts the long, hard work of hammering its twisted metal back into shape. There are Rock Riders watching him in the hills, and after a few days, they come down to investigate. He trades the motorcycle for tools and autonomy, and they leave him in peace. 

Max doesn’t tell them that. He doesn’t want to see the light change in Capable’s eyes when she asks if there were any survivors and he has to answer her honestly: no. The Repair Boy known as Keno is sitting by her side, casually close; Max wonders if this is how she tries to save people, with her heart and her mind and her body, every way she can.

He sticks to the barest facts he can manage. He might tell Furiosa the whole of it someday, if their broken edges can be welded back together, but right now, the main concern is the Bullet Farm. 

“Bullet Farm’s supplying the Buzzards,” he says, and watches as the faces around him reflect varying degrees of surprise. “Seen the vehicles leaving from the southern side.” Out of sight of even the strongest Citadel telescope. “It’s arms, at least.”

“What about guzzoline? Water?” Capable demands. 

He shrugs. “Couldn’t get that close.” He’d been perched on the rim of the mine crater, his car meticulously camouflaged in a nearby ravine. “Saw jugs and barrels, but, mm...no way to know what’s inside.”

“Gastown marks their barrels,” Toast points out. “It’s a yellow oil rig. You didn’t see anything like that?”

Max shakes his head. “Not going into Buzzard hands. Could’ve been painted over, or scratched out.”

“Do you think the Actuary knows about this?” says Plenty. 

“The Actuary knows _everything_ ,” Toast says darkly. “I’d bet water he knows about the Buzzards.”

“Do we know who’s running the Bullet Farm?” Capable looks at Furiosa, who is picking apart the amaranth cake Mari pointedly placed in front of her. “Another Imperator?”

“No one.” The words come out painfully rough, and she has to clear her throat and try again. “There’s no one. Not that I can think of. Atrox, Capto, Revel - they’re all dead. For the Bullet Farm...Bullet Farmers don’t make deals. Kalashnikov wouldn’t have allowed it. They live and breathe for weaponry and ammunition.”

“Could the Actuary have brokered a deal?” asks Toast. 

Furiosa frowns. “I don’t get the feeling he’s the type to negotiate much.”

Amy crosses her arms. “How would he even get in contact with the Buzzards? I thought they were scavengers.”

“They are scavengers.” Furiosa looks at Max. “How did you find out?”

He shrugs. “Was at a trading post out east, and mm. Heard some chatter, came to investigate.”

Her eyes narrow. “What was the chatter?”

“Uncomplimentary.”

“About the Bullet Farm, the Buzzards, or us?”

He can’t look at Furiosa sitting right there and repeat those men’s words. Not when she’s jagged metal and taut cable, calmly pulverizing cake crumbs into the steel tabletop. She’s survived by making herself into a bulwark, and now that Joe is gone, she’s bruising herself trying to find something to throw her weight against. 

He wants to tell her she can stand on her own, but he’s sure she already knows. It’s just so much more comfortable not to change. 

“Max?” Capable gently interrupts his woolgathering, and he shakes himself like a dog. 

“Heard enough to go see,” he makes himself say. “And I saw.”

“And then you blew it up?” Toast prompts.

He huffs. “Needed an exit.” 

“And _we_ need details,” Plenty says icily. “You’re telling us nothing.”

They don’t need details. He doesn’t _want_ to give them details. Furiosa is looking at him with a churning expression that he knows all too well. She is wearing the shadows of her Imperator days below her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks, and she deserves so much more than that. She is a leader, a general, and she’s been treating herself like a footsoldier; he just wants to put her in the passenger seat of his car and drive as hard as he can away from this place. 

“Please tell us what you know,” cajoles Capable. 

The buzzing rises like his shoulders toward his ears, but he breathes through clenched teeth and forces it back down. “The Blood,” he says. “Bullet Farm is being run by the Blood.”

Furiosa’s eyes spear him. “The Blood. Who is the Blood?”

“Don’t know. Never saw anyone. Just heard people say it.” He feels himself flail a little. “Tried to get in, tried to find out, but, mm. Had to make a quick exit.”

He didn’t want to say the name, didn’t want to give it credence. Furiosa is leaning forward, crumbs forgotten, and he can tell she’s latched onto the name like a goanna with the scent of its prey. 

Whoever, whatever the Blood is, Max knows in the pit of his stomach that Furiosa is going to take them down, regardless of the cost.


	97. Chapter 97

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're sticking around for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I'm attempting to finish the guest bathroom remodel. Posting might be sporadic for the next few (days, weeks, etc). 
> 
> You are all awesome. (In case you didn't know.)

The Bullet Farm is still burning, a black smudge against the deepening sky. After a lengthy discussion, Capable convinced everyone to let her signal both the Bullet Farm and Gastown, asking if any aid was needed. No reply came from the former, even though the Pups on duty scanned the horizon for any purposeful flicker of light amid the lick of orange flames; the latter replied, mysteriously, LET IT RUN ITS COURSE. 

No one knows anything about the Blood. No one has heard of them, and no one can hazard a guess as to whether the name refers to one person or many. Capable pores over Joe’s old ledgers, deciphering the different scripts of different scribes, and comes up empty-handed.

Hours later, they’re all still slumped around the Council table, wrapped in blankets against the night chill and leaning toward the ruddy glow of the oil lamps. “It’s always been Kalashnikov,” Capable says, tugging at her hair in frustration. “He’s handled _everything_.”

Furiosa has her pistol disassembled, carefully wiping each piece clean. The oiled metal glints darkly in the low light. “How many barrels of gunpowder did you blow?”

Max shrugs. “Didn’t stick around.” 

Capable doesn’t have any numbers for the Bullet Farm. “There’s a few notes on protection details,” she says, carefully turning the page of a volume gone crisp with age. “‘One load saltpeter delivered without incident’. ‘Two loads saltpeter delivered, seventeen scavs’ - what’s that word? ‘fragged’? But that was in the early years.”

Nakmin taps his fingers nervously. “Saltpeter can be used for fertilizer. Heard we used to import some from Gastown, way back. Now, we got the shit haulers all figured out, and that keeps us green.”

“Gastown’s got a lot of people, and all that haze kills plants,” Toast says. “You can use urine to make gunpowder. I bet Gastown was exporting that to the Bullet Farm.”

Capable remembers being a child, and her mother trading bottles of the carefully hoarded amber liquid for a few precious liters of fresh water. “They’ll use everything from our wombs to our piss, but tell us we don’t have any value,” she says, disgusted. 

Furiosa glowers at her gun, and Max looks discomfited. 

“What do we do?” asks Jilly. 

Furiosa uncurls, stretching her spine like a snake rearing up to strike. “Can we be sure you weren’t followed?”

“You’ve asked that seven times!” Toast shakes her head. “If he’d been followed, we’d know. We would have seen.”

“I agree with Gastown on this one,” Plenty says. “Let the fires run its course, then go see what’s left to salvage.”

“We don’t know that the Bullet Farmers haven’t fled to Gastown,” Capable points out. “They could do it tonight, when it’s dark, and we wouldn’t see.”

Max hums. “Might, mm, not be able to run.”

All heads swing toward him. “What did you do to their cars?” Toast demands. 

“...needed a few parts.”

Capable stifles a snort of laughter, and Furiosa’s eyes fairly _glow_ with approval. 

“So, what,” Toast snaps, “you just _decided_ to go scout out that Bullet Farm? And while you were there, you just _decided_ to cause a little mayhem?”

His eyes flick to Furiosa, and he nods, a quick little movement that’s obviously secondary to whatever’s going on in his head. 

Toast groans in frustration. There’s something Max isn’t saying. There is a _lot_ he isn’t saying, and Capable wonders if he’s told Furiosa, or if it involves something about Furiosa’s Imperator past. It hasn’t escaped her notice that they’re hovering around each other without touching, the invisible barrier between them charged with discomfort. 

When they need to know something, Max will tell them. That day on the salt, he’d pulled his secret map out of his jacket, placing the scrap of fabric on Furiosa’s engine block like a peace offering. He’d spoken quietly, but without hesitation. He’d _wanted_ them to turn around, even when turning around meant going back to the place they’d all been imprisoned and tortured. 

There is something he doesn’t want to say, or can’t say, some truth he’d dancing around and trying to hide. Furiosa must recognize it. “What do we do?” Capable asks, pointedly looking at Max. “Do we wait for the smoke to clear, or do we go now?”

He shakes his head. “Smoke needs to clear. ‘S not safe, otherwise.”

“It’s a lead mine,” Mari says. “Nasty, nasty shit, that stuff. Doesn’t take hardly any to get into your bones.” 

“We need munitions,” Toast points out. “We can’t rely on trading, not if we’re going to hold this section of wasteland.”

“Holding doesn’t always mean fighting,” Capable retorts. “We’ve got the water. We’ve got crops. We can trade-”

“Whatever you say, Angharad.” Toast rolls her eyes. “We haven’t even been in charge a full year, and already we’ve had two major attacks-”

“Those War Boys were still deluded by Joe’s doctrine-”

“They still tried to kill us!”

Capable sets her jaw. “If we’d had a chance to _talk_ -”

“They’d’ve killed you dead anyway,” drawls Ello. He shrugs uncomfortably. “I mean, I’m here, and I’m only half-sure you shouldn’t be dead.”

The blood rushes to her face. “Ello, _still_ -?”

“Enough,” says Furiosa tiredly. “We wait. And then we go investigate. Max, what’s the likelihood the Blood goes to ground?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t know. Disabled all the cars I could see, but, mm, can’t say there wasn’t one I missed. Can’t say they won’t fix them, either.”

“Well, we can’t see anything now,” Amy points out. “Best we all get some sleep, and see what comes with tomorrow.”

Jilly rubs at her eyes. “Agreed.”

 

****

The meeting finally breaks up. Max stands and stretches, his bum leg gone stiff and sore with the absence of motion. At least when he’s driving he can pump the clutch. 

As they near the door, Mari gently catches Furiosa’s metal arm. “Please let me make you something to help you sleep,” she says quietly. “It won’t be anything harsh. Just a gentle nudge.”

Furiosa is already shaking her head. “No.”

The Vuvalini throws up her hands. “Child of Jobassa, you will fall down dead one of these days.” 

“No.”

“You have nothing to prove to any of us,” Mari tells her. “Martyrdom isn’t necessary.”

Furiosa heaves a long-suffering sigh, and doesn’t even deign a response. 

He’s not sure he’s supposed to follow her, not after this morning’s episode and the bloody bandage still tied around her elbow. The way she’d looked at him in that moment - face twisted with fear and rage, the gun pointed at him unwavering - burns like radiation in his stomach.

He doesn’t want her to look at him that way. 

He deserves to be looked at like that. He left, and he stayed away. He stayed away long after he’d come back to himself, buried in the shame of his flight and the cold inertia of solitude. 

They’re back at her room, and she’s looking at him expectantly. “Fool?”

He hums in confusion, and makes a vague motion toward the bed, to the mess of discarded blankets. “We could...maybe wait? Maybe, mm, ‘s too soon?”

He doesn’t want to. Even seeing her as tired as she is, as half-beaten as she is, is like drinking clear, cold water after a lifetime of wandering the Waste. He wants to sink to his knees and beg her forgiveness, but...his knees won’t bend. He can’t make himself move. 

He can’t meet her eyes. Instead, he stares at the hollow of her clavicle, at the graceful curve where her neck meets her shoulder. That was the first spark, that day he’d noticed the color of her skin against the rough leather of his jacket, tucked around her to keep her warm. How many nights has he spent curled up in the driver’s seat of his newly-resurrected car, one hand fisted around his dick and the other pressing his jacket to his face, desperately searching for the scent of her? 

“Let’s go,” he hears himself say. “Just. Now. Please.”

“Where?” She doesn’t say no.

“Anywhere. The car is good. She doesn’t look like much, but she’ll take us far.”

“I can’t leave,” she says, and that’s the end of it. She hugs herself, and jerks her head toward the bed. “Let’s just sleep, okay?”

Furiosa stays. She always does. 

Max will do his level best to stay, too.


	98. Chapter 98

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehh. This could be better. I'm in a bit of a slog, honestly, probably because I start the big bathroom reno tomorrow and I'm so freaking excited I can't sit still, so I'm throwing this out here because otherwise I'm just going to go crazy. 
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving to those of you Stateside. To all of you, I'm so grateful for your support and encouragement. 
> 
> And one of these days, I promise I'll write some fluff. These kids will get their happy ending. :-D

They go to bed with bare inches between them, but when she wakes up halfway through the night, drenched in sweat and shaking in the darkness, he’s got his back pressed hard against hers. She’s sure he’s still asleep, because his breathing is deep and even, and when she lays her head back down, he shifts but doesn’t wake. 

It might just be that she’s a convenient heat source, but then she remembers the eagerness of his mouth on hers. 

She doesn’t blame him. Not really. Furiosa knows all too well what it feels like when the panic rushes in and takes over conscious thought. She didn’t expect to be abandoned by her clan; she expected to be abandoned by Max, or at least, she should have, knowing how jittery and half-feral he is. She’s only just now coming to terms with the fact that his flight _hurt_ , and it’s all an unexpected maelstrom of pain and confusion building in her chest, the pressure building like a storm. 

“Out of the womb, everything hurts, but we keep moving.” Katie had told her young charge. “Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”

Furiosa lies there in the darkness, listening to the wind howling through the fissures and crannies of the tower. Her mother is gone, Katie is gone, Valkyrie is gone. The Green Place is gone. She has the girls, she has Amy and Mari. She has Ace and her crews. 

She has a banksia seed sitting on her desk, its smoky little mouths blown open at the prospect of rain. 

_We keep moving_. 

With a sigh, she rolls toward Max, tucking her stump under his arm and her head against the back of his neck. He makes a soft noise and snuggles a little closer. 

“If you ever leave again without telling me where you’re going,” she whispers into his ear, “I swear I will fucking kill you, Fool.”

He reaches up and palms her head, the gesture rough with sleep and all the more sweet. “Mmmkay.” 

Her heart clenches painfully, and she presses her lips against his neck, just above the Immortan’s brand. 

**** 

He knows she’s not asleep when he gets up - she’s a light sleeper, they both are - but if she’s not asleep, she’s still not awake, either. As soon as he’s out of bed, she instinctively rolls into the warm spot he’s left behind, burrowing down into the blankets like a snake gone to ground. “...everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he murmurs. “Gonna go down to the garage.”

Furiosa is curled up and locked in the damp warmth of early-morning slumber, but at his words, there’s a moment when she tenses, and one red-rimmed green eye cracks open. 

“Not gonna leave,” he says quickly. “Just the garage. Just...need some time with the car.”

Somehow, that’s what she needed to hear, and she makes a muzzy noise, burying her face back in the pillow. 

He almost kisses the top of her head, but that feels...too intimate. It’s somehow not appropriate for where they are. Instead, he presses two fingers into the skin above her brand, and it’s only later that he realizes it’s exactly where her lips had touched him last night. 

****

It’s early and _cold_ , his breath a dense cloud in the chill damp of the garage. There’s only a couple of Repair Boys up and moving, wrapped in blankets and ragged shirts as they quietly argue about the prognosis of a transmission. They nod a greeting, but otherwise leave him alone, and he sinks gratefully down into his engine. 

It should not feel so familiar, this place. There’s still the sharp trickle of dread down his back, the hard clench of his bowels when he sees the white-painted Boys, but...it’s not as bad as it could be. 

Max doesn’t want this place to feel safe. It’s not safe. He can’t be lulled into complacency.

(If it’s not safe, why is he here?)

(It’s safer to be here than anywhere else.)

(That’s not true. He could be out in the desert, the only soul for miles-)

_Furiosa’s blazing eyes and their mouths open and pressed together-_

He swallows hard. He needs to be here. He _wants_ to be here. 

Hours later, he’s adjusting the lugnuts on the front left wheel when he feels cold metal against the back of his neck. It’s startling for a moment, until he realizes who it is. 

“Move an inch,” says Capable, her voice gone hoarse, “and I’ll blow your head off.”

“Nope,” he mutters.

“What?”

“‘S not loaded.” He can feel it. The balance is off. She doesn’t even have a clip in. Her hands aren’t shaking - he’ll give her credit there - but her voice goes unsteady with doubt. 

“It is!”

He turns his head to squint at her. “Pull the trigger, then.”

She hesitates.

“Thought so.” Slowly, he reaches up and pockets the gun. With his other hand, he offers her a mid-length knife. “Guns, mm. Guns are fine, but you’re in close quarters. Use a bullet once, maybe, if your aim’s good. Knives, now. Knife you can use over again.”

She narrows her eyes, confused. He huffs a little. “Take it.”

When her hand is wrapped around the hilt, he gently repositions it so she’s got the correct grip, and then guides the blade back to his throat. “Know about throats?”

Capable frowns.

“Windpipe.” He runs a finger down his own. “Sever that, your target can still breathe. Keeps ‘em alive, if you’ve got, mm, other uses for them.”

She swallows, but holds her ground.

He guides the knife back. “Carotid. Supplies blood to the brain. Sever that, bleed out in two, three minutes tops.” With his fingers on hers, he presses a little, feeling the light prick of metal piercing skin. Under his hand, she flinches when the blood wells up. “Ah-ah. Nope. You threaten, you got to mean it.” She stiffens, but he holds her fast. “Words, mm. Just empty air. Means nothing without action behind them.”

Capable makes a strangled little noise, and he releases her. She dances back a few steps and lingers there, fists balled at her sides.

Max pockets the knife and dabs at the cut. It’s already stopped bleeding. “Now. Something you wanted?”

All the fury’s gone out of her. He’s scared her, and he meant to. She’s leading the Citadel, but she’s still so _young_. She wants to be ferocious, but he’s been out in the world, and it’s all wrong to want these things. You get made fierce and angry whether you want to be or not; it’s better to try and protect the softness inside, to make it last as long as you can. He just wants a little peace, a commodity that’s rarer and more precious than clean water.

“I was going to say that if you hurt Furiosa, you answer to all of us,” she says quietly.

He nods agreeably. “I know.” He hands her back the gun. 

She blinks. “You know?”

“Seems reasonable.”

She frowns. 

“This-” he gestures vaguely, “between us...well. It’s...” He can’t put it into words. It’s new. It’s terrifying. The entire time he was gone, all he could think of was her, and when the sand and the sweat had stripped all trace of her from his clothes, it was like his skin itself had been scoured away. Every night was a new dream about the Buzzard tractor crashing down on top of her, or that awful day in the Gigahorse with her breath rasping hard in her throat. She is the center of all gravity, and the farther away he is, the more painful the pull to return. 

It is the very definition of addiction. 

Capable is watching him think, waiting patiently. When he doesn’t find speech forthcoming, she inspects her pistol, and then looks back up. “I had to say something. We - we’re not against it, you and her,” she adds quickly, “it’s just...you left. And maybe you needed to, and maybe she knew that, but-” she ducks her head, “it’s not like any of us have a good track record with men, you know?”

He does know. The very stone reeks of it.

“I’m sorry about the gun,” she confesses. “Toast said she was going to do it, but I was afraid she’d _actually_ hurt you.”

He hums. 

“Capable?”

She turns.

He tosses her a clip. “For next time.”

“You are _not_ going to hurt her again-”

“For anyone,” he says. “You’ve gotta...walk soft and carry a big stick, mm?”

She regards him solemnly. “Thank you.”


	99. Chapter 99

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a short little chapter because the next one is kind of a monster and I need this out of my hair.

The Bullet Farm burns, the fires spread along contaminated pipes and smoldering equipment. The smoke lingers on the horizon, a dark smear in the pale winter sky. Mari takes stock of the gas masks on hand, and in the sudden absence of the Buzzard threat, she conscripts several Repair Boys to help Cheedo and the handful of clinic staff to fabricate makeshift respirators. 

“If the wind shifts, we need to be prepared,” she says, deftly folding cloth into a suitable mask. “The children are priority - once lead gets in their bones, there’s no getting it back out.”

Furiosa thinks of Joe’s oldest son, Scabrous, a vile man dead a thousand days and utterly unlamented. It was no secret he’d spent the better part of his childhood shadowing his “uncles” at Joe’s outposts, and she wonders now if his time at the Bullet Farm exacerbated his tendencies for violence and sadism. 

She thinks of the things she’s done, of the rage bubbling inside her like sulfurous water, and wonders if she’s been tainted herself.

Like lizards after the shockwave, the Buzzards have completely gone to ground. The wasteland is eerily still, the only movement the diaphanous ice that forms in the shadows of the dunes. Furiosa is hesitant to reduce the patrol schedule, but there’s no reason to waste the guzzoline - not when it can be burned for heat and light - so she pares down the crews and reassigns some of her drivers to terrace watch. In the past, if she’d sent her crew to the perches, the Boys would have taken it as an emotional blow, a sign that she had no confidence in them, but everyone is so exhausted that there’s only quiet agreement. 

She’s sleeping a little, at least, now that Max is here, and she isn’t at all sure how to feel about that, or about him. On the one hand, the yawning ache in her chest at his absence has eased, but in its place is a different kind of storm, a great, foaming hurricane that is made of equal parts agonizing euphoria and wild apprehension. She thinks she might be _happy_ he’s returned, but happiness is such a foreign emotion it’s almost unidentifiable. It’s easier to lapse back into anger, to let the rage prickle beneath her skin and warm her belly. It’s easier to close her eyes when she catches herself staring at his lips or his ass, and to flinch away when he reaches out. 

The worst part is that Max is so fucking _perceptive_ , and she sees her uncertainty reflected back in his twitching gestures. The awkwardness amplifies at it ricochets between them, changing pitch and becoming more and more sour.

Max is so _good_ , and Furiosa...Furiosa is tired down to her marrow, and doesn’t have the energy for the niceties of human interaction. Part of her childishly wants things back the way they were, the way they were the morning before Gastown, when her whole body was alive and ringing like a bell with a pure, clear tone of want. The urge to steal the breath from his mouth, to taste the dust and salt of his skin, to press herself against him and feel his body warm and inviting - that urge still exists, but somehow, she can’t catch the energy of it. It’s a rope running through her hands, a flash of movement while she’s standing paralyzed and still, and she is terrified that the end will pass before she can make herself grab hold. 

So she swallows back the bitterness and drives the rig to Gastown with their allotment of water, and Max sits by her side with his shotgun ready, and nothing is said. The Actuary is nowhere in sight, and even the usual Gastown Imperator, Noz, is absent; it’s only a skeleton crew to swap and scrub the tanks, and despite her questions, no one speaks of the Bullet Farm. 

“Fucking weird, is what it is,” mutters Ello from his perch on the tanker. “The Farm explodes, and no one is talking?”

Miro just looks extremely uncomfortable, and when the guzzoline tanker is attached, Furiosa turns the rig toward home. 

The wasteland is wide and empty. She drops the cowcatcher as soon as her wheels hit pavement, the wide metal arms sweeping out to shuffle any Buzzard mines out of the way for defusing and collection. 

Max is eyeing the horizon, his knuckles gone white on his sawn-off shotgun. He’s a compact mass of anxiety, coiled like a spring and ready to bolt. 

She almost reaches over with her metal hand, but it suddenly feels heavier than usual, useless metal protruding from the end of her stump. 

Something like frustration burns in her throat. 

There are no mines. It’s surreal, and the closer they get to the Citadel, the tighter the clench of tension in her belly. Furiosa swallows back a furious urge to drive the road again, to push the cowcatcher through dunes she’d missed. This isn’t a break. It can’t be. People like her don’t _get_ breaks, only the calm before the oncoming storm. 

“You’re home safe!” Capable grins as they all disembark. Her arms are thrown wide, but she quickly turns it into a leisurely stretch when both Furiosa and Max shy away from her embrace. “How was it? Any news?”

Furiosa shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Capable huffs and rolls her eyes. “When we renegotiate the water treaty, I’m adding information sharing to our list of demands.”

Max grunts. “Good luck.”


	100. Chapter 100

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One. Hundred. Chapters. 
> 
> How is this even possible? This was supposed to be a quick little drabble, but I for one am so very very grateful for the crazy monstrosity this has turned into.
> 
> THANK YOU for all your support. I seriously would never have made it this far without you.

The rig needs some tuning, like it does after every run; if it’s not the transmission, it’s the brakelines, and if it’s not the brakelines, it’s something else, and while Furiosa longs for the familiar reliability of the War Rig, she welcomes the chance to get elbow-deep in grease and filter out the anxiety with the brake fluid. 

This time, it’s only a few minor tweaks, and the work is complete long before she feels anywhere close to calm. In the past, mechanical maintenance has helped ground her, each numbing grind of the ratchet bringing her closer to her core. It’s best when she doesn’t have to talk to anyone, and can just sink down into her vehicle.

She’s considering a complete engine rebuild when Ace leans against the bumper and drawls, “Don’t need to fix it if it isn’t broken.”

Furiosa bites back an angry retort. “Just need to clear my head, is all.”

He nods at the doorway. “Sleep helps with that. Food, too.” 

She wants to argue, but it’s easier to just nod and hand over her spanner. “Need anything from the kitchens?”

He shakes his head. “Everyone else ate hours ago. Get out of here, Boss.”

“I _am_ still the boss,” she reminds him, but he gives her a shove toward the door. 

Jilly’s in between soup batches, but she has a fresh batch of vegetable paste bars; Furiosa gets two, and Jilly adds a crusty amaranth cake with a wink. Furiosa twists her lips into something approaching a smile, and nods her thanks. 

Between Ace’s gruff affection and Jilly’s cheerful welcome, Furiosa feels...over-loved. It’s something she doesn’t deserve. Ace is one thing; in the thousands of days since she’d been ejected from the Vault, she’s come to rely on his support more than she likes to admit, but to have others greet her with warmth and smiles...it feels wrong. It feels false. She doesn’t deserve such niceties, not with the blood on her hands and the storm of confusion howling in her chest. 

She doesn’t know where she aims to go, but she ends up on the middle tower’s terrace, drawn to Max as if by the mysterious connection between a compass arrow and north. The sun is low in the sky, a distant orange ball that only hints at the memory of summer. Max is huddled against the wall of one of the pumphouses in the lee of the wind, the collar of his jacket turned up and scarf wrapped around his head, and he starts a little at her approach. 

“It’s just me,” Furiosa says. “Is it okay if I join you?”

He nods, massaging one hand with the other. The motion of his strong fingers catches her eye, and for a brief moment, she imagines his broad palms against the skin of her hips, drifting down-

Heat floods her face before she can stop it, and she coughs. “Bean bar?”

“‘S yours.”

“Jilly gave me two.”

“Should eat ‘em both.” 

She holds the bar out. “I know you want it.”

He hesitates for a moment, but in the end, his scav nature wins out, and he snatches the bar like a starving crow. 

As they gnaw their bars, Furiosa looks out over the desert. The shadows of the dunes stretch out as the sun drifts lower, dark as bruises against the cold, pale sand. There’s a booming black market for sludge from Gastown; anything that can burn is being used for heat in the Wretched camps, and the acrid smoke hangs low around the Citadel towers, heavy and blue. The lights of Gastown glitter in the distance like stars, and in the west, the Bullet Farm smolders under a poisonous haze. 

It’s cold. She wishes she’d brought up a blanket, but she’s only got a threadbare shirt. Max’s warmth is enticing, but she can’t bring herself to snuggle closer. They sleep curled together like Pups, but outside of her room, she somehow can’t make herself touch him. If she touches him, she’s going to kiss him, and after the last hundred days... She doesn’t know how she can kiss him when she’s this angry. She _wants_ but she doesn’t know what, and the ache is like starving for oxygen.

That’s perhaps the heart of it all, her not knowing. For seven thousand days, Furiosa lived for escape, for revenge, and in those last hazy moments of the run, she’d made the decision that no matter what happened, if she was going to die, she was going to take Joe with her. Except...that hadn’t happened. She’d killed him, and against all expectations had survived herself, and now she’s skidding across loose sand, utterly lost, with no road to follow and no landmarks to guide her. Her discomfort is affecting everyone around her, but she can’t shut it off, and the more she tries to bury it, the harder it presses against her skull. 

She glances over at Max. He’s staring at the horizon, watching, waiting. He’s looking for something, and he’s looking to the east, away from Gastown and in the opposite direction of the Bullet Farm. Since he came back, she’s noticed his gaze drifting east several times whenever there’s a view. There’s something out there, and he’s watching for it, and whatever it is, he’s not telling her.

She wants to rage at him, but...he told her about the Buzzards, and maybe he’s watching for them, but they come from everywhere, and Max is definitely focused on the east. She wants to trust him - wants to believe that he’s not telling her because he either physically can’t, or because it’s not her concern - but trust is a word that feels as brittle and cold as the air in her lungs. 

“If I need to know, you’ll tell me, right?” she asks quietly. “About what might be out there?”

He frowns, and she can _see_ the conflict in his body, the way the words twist themselves up inside like thick ropes of chain. He’s looking at her, considering, and she suddenly wishes she hadn’t asked. His blood runs in her veins, she _owes_ him-

“Rock Riders,” he says finally. “Ran into ‘em. Might come this way.”

Another one of her failures, hitting her with the hard buffet of sand and angry wind. “Coming for blood, or something else?”

He shakes his head. “Think I talked ‘em down a bit. Might, mm, owe ‘em some guzz.”

“You talked with them?” It’s hard to think of him as a negotiator, but he’s survived alone in the wasteland for so long; obviously he must have done some trading. 

“Had to. Needed my car back.” 

“How much guzz? When?”

“What was owed, maybe more.” He shrugs. “‘S a long ride. Might not come.”

“If there’s a threat to the Citadel, I need to know about it,” she snaps, and the rage ignites like a puddle of spilled fuel, virulent and hot. “You can’t just show up out of nowhere and make vague statements and not give us the information we need! We give you food and water and shelter, but everyone wants our fucking heads, so if the Rock Riders are gunning for us, _I need to know_.”

He shakes his head. “ _Not_ gunning-”

“I betrayed them,” she grinds out. “I get that. It was supposed to be an even trade, and I fucked it up-”

“‘S not like that-”

She’s on her feet, the nails of her human fingers digging hard into her palm. “How would you know? Do you even know what I had to do to negotiate that trade? To convince them I was trustworthy?”

He’s still sitting, but watching her warily. 

“And I got _unlucky_ ,” Furiosa spits, the word tasting like ash and dust in her mouth, like the bitter drop in her stomach as Angharad tumbled to her death. She’d thought they were making it, she’d thought they could actually _be free_ , and then Angharad had gone under the wheels... If she’d been more prepared, if she’d checked the fucking hinges, if she’d swallowed back her hubris, maybe, just maybe-

And then to hear about the death of the Green Place, and _Valkyrie_ -

“And _you_ ,” she breathes, the words tumbling out. “You just fucking leave. You just fucking leave and come back when you need someone to cover your ass, and then you _don’t tell us_ -”

Now Max is on his feet, hands out in supplication. “Hey,” he says, with a gentle desperation that slices through her ribcage. To her horror, she realizes she’s crying. “ _Hey._ ”

She doesn’t mean to hit him, but before she can stop herself, she does. Her muscles are primed with adrenaline and rage, and it’s a reflex she can’t control. Her vision is swimming, but her fist connects with something solid, and the guilt pours in like guzzoline on a fire. 

They’re evenly matched: Max with the strength and bulk, and Furiosa with ruthless speed. She throws a punch and he blocks; he’s resisting just enough to prevent being seriously injured, and _fuck_ , why is she always doing this, she’s always fighting the people who try to reach out-

Her foot catches on a loop of irrigation hose, and in that second, Max plants a wicked right hook that sends her sprawling. She goes down hard, vision exploding into stars. Gasping and spitting out dirt, she presses her face into the ground, groping desperately for her calm, mechanical core. Engines don’t work like this. She’s an engine. She is the smooth action of pistons and cranks, the methodical movement of the transmission from one gear to the next. She isn’t human. She isn’t messy, sobbing, drooling into the sand; she is steel and heat, combustion directed through pipes for a greater purpose. 

Max drops down next to her, one arm a solid weight across her shoulders. She lies there for a long time, just breathing, his fingers idly combing through her hair. “Didn’t tell you because it’s so uncertain,” he finally mumbles. “Seemed like you’ve got enough on your hands, mm?” 

She can’t look at him. “I need to know.”

“That’s all there is. They might come. Can’t say when or how many.” He palms the back of her head. “Nothing you can fix.”

She’d noticed this morning that he’d started watering her plant again, its crispy tendrils eagerly seeking out the moisture. Maybe it’s not something she can fix, but Max fixes things without even trying. 

Furiosa shifts, and he helps her up, wincing as his bad knee pops in protest. He’s bleeding from a small cut on his lip. The adrenaline is draining out of her system, the chill of the desert twilight seeping in in its place, and she bites back a shiver. 

Max shrugs toward the stairs. “Should go back in.”

He’s watching intently as she scrubs the dirt from her cheeks. The blood on his lip glistens in the dying light, and he’s suddenly too close, his breath too warm-

“Fool,” she says hoarsely, because her pulse is a hot staccato in her ears, and she can’t swallow. 

“You should know,” he rasps, “that I wanted to come back to you. I _tried_ , but I, mm.” He makes a vague gesture at his head, grinding his teeth in frustration. 

She wants to still scream at him, but it’s not about him leaving. It’s not even about _him_. She is seventeen and terrified and alone. Her mother is dead, and her clan never comes, and _hope is a mistake_ but she’s so young and naive that all she knows how to do is hope. 

It’s not about Max. Max is doing his best. She can see the demons in his eyes, can see when he shudders in a warm room and swats at his ears as if he’s being bothered by gnats. It’s all about her, about Furiosa, about how she’s broken in ways she’s only now coming to understand. She’d thought she was strong. She’d thought she’d _won_ , by earning her Imperator grease after Joe had declared her worthless. She’d thought she’d won when she stole his harem, and she thought she’d won when she’d wrapping his face around the Gigahorse’s back axle. 

She’s starting to realize she hasn’t won. In the beginning, Angharad had accused her of being brainwashed by Joe, and Furiosa had been so insulted they hadn’t spoken for a week; now, she’s starting to understand exactly what Angharad had meant. Furiosa doesn’t believe Joe was a god, but she’s built her life and constructed her barriers around Joe anyway, and isn’t that exactly the same?

“I’m sorry,” Max says miserably, his fingers brushing against her sleeve with careful caution, like a penitent seeking absolution. “Not good at staying. Get lost in my head, and it all gets mixed up-”

“It’s not you,” she makes herself say, because he looks shredded, and it’s all her fault. “It’s me. I just. I’m not-”

His head swings up. “You _are_.”

“The fuck do you know,” she grumbles. It’s a cruel thing to say, but it comes out before she can swallow it back. 

“You,” he snaps, and well...that’s fair. He does. 

“Yeah.” She can feel the hard burn of tears in the back of her eyes, and scrubs her human hand against her face. “I’m sorry, Max. I’m so sorry.”

He kisses her forehead, and pulls her gently against him. His body is like an engine block, blazing with heat, and she can’t suppress a shiver of relief as the warmth seeps back into her skin. “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane,” he reminds her. “Fixing, mm. It’s a hard thing. Takes time. Hurts.”

“What if something can’t be fixed?” 

“It can.” She can feel his ribs expand around his lungs, and then he admits, “Didn’t think it could, but you’re, mm. Changing my mind.”

 _Oh_. 

It doesn’t make sense. It’s never made sense, how someone so good could want to load her guns and spend his nights curled around her, and it _still_ doesn’t make sense, but…

“I want to kiss you,” she mumbles. “It’s all mixed up-”

His body surges up against hers, his mouth hot and urgent, and before her back even hits the wall of the pumphouse she’s already got her human hand fisted in his hair. He tastes like salt and vegetable paste and he smells like sweat and old leather-

“Fool,” she breathes, and as he fumbles with the buckles of her prosthetic, she feels him grin against her teeth.

“Max,” he reminds her, but anything else is lost in the kiss.


	101. Chapter 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I meant to write smut, but it accidentally became something else and I had to break it into two chapters. 
> 
> But...par for the course, right? Right.

She can list the people she’s kissed on one hand, and then there’s Max. At some point, it transcends kissing; they’re trying to crawl inside each other’s skin, to bring light to the secret spaces and blow each other open like banksia seeds in a fire. He is a blaze of light and heat, and she is glowing like incandescent iron, every touch throwing sparks. He is a smelter, burning away the impurities, and she bites against his mouth, feeling herself ignite. 

They’re not so desperate that they fuck on the terrace. It’s limited to searing kisses and deliciously grinding together like adolescents, and when her human hand slips beneath his shirt, he bites down hard on her shoulder, stifling a yelp. 

“Is this okay?” she asks, concerned. 

“...’s _cold_!” he sputters, shifting to trap her hand between their stomachs. She can feel his pulse fluttering wildly in his belly.

“Could go inside...?”

His chuckle rumbles through his body, and it’s only then that she feels how stiff he is against her thigh, and she blushes like a girl at the unintended innuendo.

“Indoors,” she supplies. “I meant indoors.” But his mouth is so welcoming, and she can’t resist sucks hard at his lip, the taste of his blood sharp on her tongue. “Although…”

“Wicked woman,” he breathes, and inhales the air in her lungs. 

They take the back stairs, tripping down the steps. Every landing and switchback becomes a place to momentarily hide in the shadows, hands seeking the places of innermost heat and want. Furiosa’s prosthetic arm is awkwardly slung over her shoulder, and every time Max presses her back against the wall, the metal fist digs hard into her shoulder or swings between them to bruise their ribs. As soon as they’re in her room, it drops to the ground unnoticed, tangled in the sleeve of her shirt. 

They fumble with the latch, trying to bolt the door while entwined around each other, and she lets him back her across the floor to the bed. His palms are rough from engine oil and sand, but he is reverent as he slides them over her bare breasts, humming in awe. “Is this, mm…?” 

“Fool,” she says against his mouth, and cups his scalp in her human hand, bringing his forehead against hers. “It’s all right.”

His lips quirk, and his eyes are so very, very blue. For the first time, she notices that they’re flecked with tiny bits of brown, like leaves floating in a clear, clean pool. She thinks of mud spatter, of hidden freckles, of birds flying high against the sun. 

“Okay,” he says. “Mm. Okay.” He nods decisively, and steps back to begin untying his boots. 

They don’t undress each other; her shirt’s on the floor, but it’s hardly more than a scrap at this point anyway, and they’re both still fully armed despite the relative safety of the Citadel and the locked door of her room. Furiosa has very few inhibitions about nakedness - she can’t, not after thousands of days amidst the War Boys, living bodies crowded into a small space - but as she kicks off her pants, she’s suddenly, painfully self-conscious about her body. She doesn’t have the gorgeous, healthy curves of the milk mothers, and she’s covered in scars and scabs. Even as a child, she’d skewed toward gangly instead of plump, and now she’s acutely aware of how poorly she’s taken care of herself since the coup; her hipbones and ribs jut out above muscles made wiry with insufficient food and too little sleep. She’s never been particularly enamored of her stump, but it suddenly feels especially awkward and ugly, the scar tissue at the end a gnarled twist of flesh. 

Panic hits in a sharp spike of adrenaline, and she has to swallow hard against a surge of bile. Her arms come up automatically, a barrier of scarred skin that has never once protected her. 

Max is standing across from her, looking equally strained. He’s folding and re-folding his trousers, a nervous action she recognizes immediately. He hasn’t taken off his shirt, and his legs are luridly pale beneath its tattered hem. He’s thickly muscled except for his right knee, which is about as ugly a mess as she’s ever seen. The brace suddenly makes perfect sense, and it’s a testament to the skill of his surgeon that he managed to keep the leg at all. 

The anxiety cracks like an egg, and Furiosa has to stuff a fist in her mouth to stifle sudden hysterical laughter. It’s not appropriate at all, not when they’re both half-naked and so incredibly uncomfortable, but it’s like coughing; once she starts, she can’t stop, and the effort of holding it back sparks tears in her eyes. 

Max gives her a terrified look, clutching his trousers to his chest. 

“Look at us,” she manages, gesturing with her stump. “Road warriors. Feared throughout the Wasteland-”

He makes an odd strangled sound, but there’s a strong chance it might be agreement. “It’s, mm...been awhile,” he chokes out, and coughs to clear his throat. There are more words, and she can _see_ them crawl underneath his skin, but when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. 

“Me too,” she says quickly, hugging herself. “Should we, maybe-?”

He nods way too many times, not meeting her eyes. 

The clothes go back on. It’s a relief after the damp, chilly air, but...it still feels a little like defeat. 

They stand there, awkward in the silence. They’re caught between gears, not quite ready to shift forward but somehow unable - and unwilling - to shift back. They’d go perfectly together - somehow, she knows this, it’s just a matter of translating the gear ratios - but in the meantime, they’re an engine still under construction. 

Max shoves his hands in his pockets, glowering. His pupils are still dilated, lips swollen from kissing her. She understands completely; she’s buzzing with anxiety and unfulfilled want, and it feels like an incomplete combustion, volatile chemicals aching for the flame. 

“I have an idea,” Furiosa says. “Come on.”

****

It’s the time of night when the girls and the Vuvalini would normally retire to the Salon for an hour or two of conversation and knitting before bed, but there is a single oil lamp burning in the Vault. “Furiosa,” Mari says, surprised, looking up from an ancient-looking ledger. “Max. Is everything alright? What’s wrong?”

Furiosa, caught momentarily off-guard, stammers a little. “I, um. We’d like a bottle of alcohol.”

The Vuvalini raises an eyebrow. “The cleaning kind or the drinking kind?”

“The drinking kind.”

“I see.” Mari closes the ledger and stiffly gets to her feet. “And I’m going to guess you’re not making herbal tinctures.”

She doesn’t have an excuse prepared. She doesn’t want to say _help me fuck this man_ , not when Max is standing right next to her with the whites of his eyes sharp in the lamplight. He deserves better than that. Under Mari’s stare, she’s wavering. She needs help - they both do - but her moment of vulnerability is failing, walls of sand collapsing in around her. There’s just a vague memory of faceless women around a flickering fire, drinking something that burns her mouth and tastes like bottled summer, and the tiny limes Keeper’s sister grew back in the camp. She remembers warmth and comfort, and falling asleep leaning against Valkyrie’s chest, loose-limbed and happy, and she wants that for Max. 

He saves her. He always does. “Got some conversation to get through,” he says. “And, mm…” He reaches over to claim Furiosa’s human hand. 

Mari nods, a tiny smile twitching at her lips. “The boy’s honest. Well, a little liquid courage isn’t always undue. You understand, though, it’s a tool, not a crutch.” Her eyes look almost sad.

Max’s fingers clench around her own. “Got it.”

Mari shuffles into a corner and starts digging through a cabinet. “Back in the day, we called this ‘vodka’,” she announces, holding up a plastic bottle of clear liquid. “Made from potatoes. I can’t say old Joe and I would have gotten along, but I appreciate that booze isn’t abused around here.”

“It’s all for trading,” Furiosa says automatically. Her stomach cramps, but she makes herself admit, “I paid Cheedo’s father twelve bottles.”

That stops the Vuvalini in her tracks. “I thought that girl came willingly.”

“She did,” Furiosa says. She remembers the tearful goodbye, the bone-thin father kissing his dark-haired daughter before relinquishing her into Furiosa’s custody. Cheedo had been practically vibrating with excitement, with the promise of being treasured by so powerful a man after living her whole life in rags. “He wasn’t stupid. He would have traded them on.”

Mari relaxes a little. “Well. She’s good, that one. A lot of strength, a lot of smart. I’ve known initiates with less drive.” She shakes her head, and hands Max the bottle. “But no mind. A word of advice from an old biddy: drink water. No sense paying tomorrow for tonight, eh?”

Furiosa has only been truly drunk a handful of times, and most of those were with Valkyrie, so she just nods. “Thank you.”

Mari stares hard at them. “Nothing is fixed in a single day,” she says finally. “Remember that, eh?”

“Fixing’s got to start somewhere,” Max mutters.


	102. Chapter 102

Part of her wants to go back up on the terrace, to have open sky and endless desert around her because she’s feeling trapped by the cage of her own ribs, and it’s getting hard to breathe. It’s cold out there, though, the sun having gone below the horizon with its scant heat, and the risk of someone finding them is too great. 

Instead, they go back to her room and sit on the bed, leaning against the alcove wall with their shoulders barely touching. 

She pulls a blanket up, tucking it around her legs. “How do we do this?”

Max shrugs. He considers the bottle, and with a sigh, unscrews the cap and takes a hard swig. Coughing as he swallows, he hands the bottle to Furiosa. “Mmm...bottoms up.”

The vodka burns. It’s nothing like the warm, summery liquor she remembers from her adolescence. This is fierce and raw and it’s exactly what she needs, a good, clean fire to scour everything away. They pass the bottle in silence, the alcohol settling into her stomach like glowing coals. 

“You could have talked to me,” she finally says. 

Max hums, confused. 

“Before you left.” He frowns, and she barrels ahead, the words stumbling off her tongue in a loose rush. “You were...off. I’m not blind. You think I didn’t see?”

He shrugs. He knows it wasn’t the best option, and that’s what kills her, that he knew and still couldn’t stay.

“And if not to me, then to one of the girls, maybe.” He looks unaccountably alarmed, and she snorts. “Okay, maybe not the girls. But-” she knocks her shoulder against his, “you’re not the only one who’s scared. You know that, right?” The last part almost doesn’t come out, almost gets caught in her throat and stays unsaid.

He grunts, but then his fingers are suddenly around hers, callused and rough and firm. “I know.” His voice is barely a rumble, more sensation than sound.

“I was worried,” she admits.

He shakes his head, a movement like a seizure. “No. Shouldn’t. ‘M fine.”

“Everyone gets unlucky,” she says. “Even you.” She shouldn’t have to say that; his body is marked by his unlucky days, the ones she knows - the brand on his neck, the scar on his shoulder - and the ones she doesn’t.

“Then you keep moving,” he snaps, and it’s like a wild animal baring its teeth when it’s cornered. He’s not letting go of her hand, but he’s gone still and tense.

“My mother _died_ ,” Furiosa retorts. “Angharad died. Valkyrie died. I saw them. I’ve lost people and I’ve kept moving.” He’s not looking at her, and she cranes her neck so he has to. “I knew they were gone. You...you’d just disappear and leave me wondering. I’d spend the rest of my life looking at the horizon.”

“Hope is a _mistake_ -”

“You,” she says forcefully, “are _not_ a mistake.”

Their faces are so close, and she’s suddenly very aware of his lips. It would take nothing at all to close the gap between them, but somehow she’s frozen.

She can see his heart pounding in the vein under his jaw. “Made mistakes,” he grinds out. “People near me...they get killed.”

“People always get killed,” she retorts. “What if it’s _you_?”

“It’d be fine-”

“IT’S NOT FINE!” She shoves him, hard, and launches herself to her feet. “What if…” She’s hugging herself, unsteady and feeling like a flash fire, dangerous and volatile. “What if I want you to be here?”

Something flickers across his eyes, and he shakes his head. “Can’t...I make my own way-”

“You can’t _say_ that, and in the same breath tell me we’re finding redemption together,” she snaps. The anger flares up, hotter than before, and she’s choking on fumes and ash. “Is it me? Am I…” She doesn’t know what to say. Too damaged? Too violent? Too far past redemption? It’s so hard to be a person, so hard to work her way out of her engine-self, to look in her shard of mirror and see someone other than Joe’s ruthless Imperator. 

“You,” Max croaks, and he’s also staggering to his feet. He’s squeezing the bottle so hard the plastic creaks, white lines spidering out around his fingers. “You...Furiosa, you’re...”

“I know!” She hugs her naked stump against her chest, feeling bruised and raw and unstable. “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane. That’s what you said. Well, I’m trying to fix what’s broken, but this whole fucking world is-”

“ _Stop._ ” The bottle drops to the floor, rolling across the room. He’s hunched over, clutching at his head. One hand comes up, as if warding off a blow. “Please. Stop.”

The words fall between them and hit the ground like shattering glass. They’re so plaintive and filled with pain, and as he sinks to his knees, Furiosa has the terrifying thought that maybe she’s somehow killed him with her anger. 

She crouches just out of reach, her heart suddenly pounding in her throat. “Max?”

He’s breathing hard, great, shuddering gasps that seem to take every ounce of strength in his body. The room is cold, but he’s drenched in sweat, shaking fists balled up by his ears as he presses his face to the floor. 

“Max,” she whispers, reaching out. He gropes blindly for her touch, pressing his forehead into her human palm.“I’m so sorry-”

“ _Jessie._ ” The word bursts out of him like a kidney stone being passed, and Furiosa goes still. His grip on her arms is bruising, his breath hot and damp on her skin. “‘S her name. And we...mm, we had. Sprog.” He’s choking on the memories, dredging them up like bodies from the sand, and she doesn’t need to know, she doesn’t need him to relive this pain, but she can’t breathe to make him stop and he’s still speaking. “And on the road, when they - _hrgh_ \- and then - my knee - and I can’t-”

“I’m sorry,” she’s saying, stricken, “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

He looks up at her, eyes bloodshot and blazing. “I am not,” he says, chest heaving, “ _reliable_.”

She blinks. “What?”

“I couldn’t-” he twitches- “couldn’t protect them. Should have. Was my _job_.” He shudders a little. “Serve and protect. My family - couldn’t even....”

The way he talks, the way he _is_ , Furiosa has always thought he’s a little out of sync with time. Amy had theorized once that maybe he was from a town further west or south, somewhere small and isolated, where civilization had somehow lingered. He’s from Before, but not in the same way Joe was. He’s fought becoming a wasteland feral, and it’s slowly poisoning him. The War Boys have tumors but their consciences are clear. Max’s guilt has metastasized through him, eating away at him from the inside out.

Max is a putrefying wound, and like an animal he’s holding himself away, licking at the pain and prepared to bite anyone who tries to help. Furiosa is a weapon, an object of blunt force and destruction, but somehow, she is the only surgical instrument he’s allowed near. She is not equipped to heal his wounds, but somehow, she has to try.

She fists her hand in his hair, bringing their foreheads together. She can’t say anything that can relieve his pain; she knows all too well that words don’t work that way.

He shudders, and gestures to her torso. “I can’t...can’t do that. I can’t...not with you. Not again.”

 _Oh_. 

“I’m barren,” she says. “There will never be a child.”

“You can’t know that,” he mutters. “You can’t know-”

“Joe made certain,” she snaps, and his head jerks up, eyes wide, because somehow, _Max doesn’t know_. She’d assumed everyone knew; her status as both Imperator and former Wife was part of what brought the War Boys around to support the girls, but somehow, he’s missed all of this. He wasn’t around, and by the time he’d come back, it was old news, and Max had just...not heard. The question is drawn into the lines of his forehead, urgent and plain. “I told you I was stolen as a child,” she says quietly. 

He hums an off-key note of distress, fingers clenching around her arms. 

“My mother told me to survive,” she says. “And I have.” _There’s no glory in dying,_ Mary Jo Bassa had hissed, the last, hurried moments before Prime Imperator Vernal shot her in the head. _Whatever they want, whatever they ask - do it. Stay alive. You can’t escape if you’re dead, do you hear me, Furiosa? Do whatever it takes. There’s no shame in staying alive. You keep moving, do you understand? You have to keep moving._

She’d done everything she could. She’d swallowed back her rage and indignation, swallowed back the horror of submitting first to Joe’s body, and then to the Organic Mechanic’s experiments when she didn’t conceive. Once the Organic had declared her infertile, Joe had given her to Vernal, with the cruel instruction to see if she could be bred by the other Imperators. 

She’d managed to steal a handful of tiny leather spikes - no bigger than tacks, really - off Vernal’s workbench as she was marched past. She’d tucked them away at the first opportunity, and when Imperator Canis thrust himself inside her, his howl of pain had been the most delicious sound she’d ever heard. 

“Nails!” he’d bellowed, cradling his bleeding dick. “Her cunt’s a fucking bag of nails!”

She thought she’d be killed, but instead, the act made Joe _laugh_ , and she’d been handed over to Ace. “Be a good War Bitch, little Bag of Nails,” Joe had chuckled, “and you’ll be rewarded.”

_Do whatever it takes._

She hadn’t just been good. She’d been the best. 

“Hey,” Max whispers. 

“I need you,” she chokes out. “I didn’t know...before, I couldn’t...and then you gave me your _blood_ -”

His eyebrows jump in surprise. “Didn’t think you remembered that.”

“Capable told me.”

He breathes a little. “Owed you that much, at least. You got us out-”

“ _You_ turned us from the Salt-”

“Needed you alive,” he mutters. “Got enough ghosts in my head. Needed you to not be one of them.”

“Fool,” she says, and his eyes flick up, a quick flash of concern. “Maybe I don’t want you to be one of mine.”

He shrugs. “Too late for me-”

“Bullshit. You don’t believe that.”

He doesn’t. He wouldn’t have come back, or kept coming back. She needs him to see that, to _say _it. “I don’t know what this is,” she admits, “and I don’t know where we’re going. But didn’t you say that maybe together...we could find some redemption?”__

__“Yeah,” he murmurs, a breath of relief, and tentatively brushes his fingers across her neck._ _

__She only feels safe - truly safe - when he’s by her side, and maybe it’s the alcohol, but she feels like a rig speeding over roadless sand with no destination. She’s feeling a little brave, a little reckless. She wants to see how far this safety goes, and she’s pretty sure he’s in the passenger seat right beside her._ _

__“I need you with me,” she says quietly. “I _want_ you with me. I’m so - I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I know it’s easier with you than when you’re not here.”_ _

__He nods, a quick jerk of motion, and his fingers tighten around her own. “Yeah,” he rasps. “I shouldn’t - I told you, I’m not safe-”_ _

__“I don’t care-”_ _

__“And you’re _so_ …” He lets go of her, making a vague motion that could mean anything. _ _

__“Max-”_ _

__He kisses her. It’s soft and gentle, and she thinks of his dead wife, of his child. There is so much _sorrow_ bound up in each of them that she can taste it on his lips. He knows how to love because he’s been loved before, and it’s haunted his footsteps through the Waste; she’s been loved before too, but she’d forgotten what it felt like, forgotten that she was even capable of it. _ _

__“We keep moving,” she whispers. “You and me.”_ _

__He nods, and presses his forehead against hers. "Yeah. Yeah, we do."_ _


	103. Chapter 103

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delays. Between the holiday and family shindigs and me trying to do various renovation things because I'm a crazy person, posting is going to be sporadic at best. (I'm saying this hoping it isn't - when I warn y'all it's going to be sporadic, that seems to kick me into a higher gear, so maybe it'll work again this time. No promises.) 
> 
> Anyway. If I don't post before then, have a merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and for those of you who don't, just know that I'm counting your support as part of _my_ Christmas miracle this year. I couldn't have gotten this far without you.

When the dawn comes creeping in cold and pale, they’re lying side by side like corpses laid out for show. It’s been hours since the bottle was drained, passed back and forth in silence until the last acrid drops were licked from its rim. 

Furiosa sleeps, her shoulder tucked against Max’s, and her pinky finger twined around his own. He listens to the slow, even cadence of her breath as the sky gradually lightens. 

The memory of her wheezing in the back of the Gigahorse lingers beneath his skin, the sound of her lungs shredding themselves echoing in the cavern of his skull. He doesn’t want to lean on her, not when he’s seen exactly how fragile she is, but he can’t fucking stay away. His blood is in her veins, but somehow the transfer went both ways, and she’s soaked into his flesh and itching in a way he can’t ignore and can’t resist. 

He feels loose, like a suspension system gone soft and wobbly with age. He feels like a precarious dune, ready to dissolve at the slightest pressure. The enormity of where he is - and who is lying next to him, and what it _means_ to be sharing her bed - is starting to bubble up despite his best efforts, and with it comes the bitter wash of panic. 

In all the days since the end of the world, he hasn’t spoken about his family, until now. He’s not sure what it means, to have shared this piece of himself - and to have shared it with _her_ \- and he doesn’t know how to proceed. 

He’s suddenly on very unstable ground. 

He’s also more than a little bit drunk. When he closes his eyes, the world spins gently around him. The only solid point is Furiosa, warm and sleepy beside him, her finger hooked in his. It’s disorienting, and almost, very almost, pleasant. 

When he finally sleeps, he dreams. 

He’s in the main garage, up to his elbows in the Interceptor’s engine compartment. He’s trying to reattach the fuel pump, but due to the odd physics of dreams, the hose clamps refuse to tighten properly. It’s frustrating, but not overly so, and he inexplicably finds string and scissors, and tries that instead. 

He’s absorbed in his work when something clamps around his good leg. Occasionally, an attention-starved Pup will mistake him for someone less emotionally constipated, but when he looks down…

Instead of a grinning death’s head, the child is chubby and full of health, rosy cheeks scrunched up beneath wheat-brown hair. 

“Dada!” Sprog chirps, and Max’s heart shudders to a halt. 

His brain is a roaring wall of sand, blank as the sky and twice as vast, but instinctively, he wipes a hand on his jacket and reaches down to cup his son’s head. The boy’s hair is baby-soft, and he raises his arms, demanding to be picked up with insistent, wordless syllables. 

When a child asks to be held, a parent responds, and Sprog is in Max’s arms before he can even think. The toddler is solid and _heavy_ , squirming with delight against Max’s shoulder. 

Max can’t remember how to breathe. The world is howling in his ears, and all he can see is his son, his beautiful, perfect, happy, living son. 

“There you are!” 

Father and child turn, and Sprog reaches out with a cheerful screech. “My boys,” Jessie says affectionately, coming up to lean into Sprog’s excited hands. “Partners in _grime_.” 

Max’s lungs are two motionless stones, his heart thundering in his mouth. He’s primed for violence, primed for this to be a nightmare - it’s always a nightmare - but the blood never comes. Jessie grins at him, and Sprog giggles, and they’re _alive_ and whole-

With a wrenching gasp, he’s suddenly awake, his body convulsing as its need for air overwhelms the paralysis. He closes his eyes, chest heaving, and desperately tries to regain the dream, but it’s slipping away, subsumed by the pounding of his heart. 

“No. No no no NO.” His fists clench at the blankets, knuckles white and popping with the strain. They were happy, they were safe, they were alive-

“Hey,” Furiosa murmurs sleepily, pressing her face into his shoulder.

He wants that dream. He wants it more than he’s wanted anything. He wants to feel his son’s wispy hair and damp breath, wants his sticky fingers and the sweetness of his baby skin. He wants his wife, her strong hands and angular body, her mischievous giggle and the way she chews her lip when she’s concentrating. He wants his _family_ with an ache so fierce it starts in his marrow and blasts the skin from his flesh. He’s helpless in its wake, a ball of trembling agony too raw to even cry. 

He can’t remember their faces. Jessie’s face is a blur, like a shadow he can only see from the corner of his eye. He knows facts: she had curly brown hair, and her eyes were brown...or were they hazel? How many hours had they spent curled around each other, her hair falling around his face like a veil-

He’s going to be sick. He can feel his whole body revolting, every muscle clenching as one. 

They’re _dead_ , and the world has ended, but Max is still here. He’s killed in revenge, and he’s killed , and he’s killed in self-defense, and it had started in exactly that order. There’d been a name for it, back in the day - terminal crazy - and it fucking kills him that he can remember standing in Fife’s office saying those words, but not the shape of his wife’s face. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He’s been lost in time. The days blurred together until his entire existence was one endless scream lost in the vast wasteland. 

And now here’s Furiosa, who is nothing like Jessie at all, who is a wild blaze of pain and fury all her own but somehow still feels like somewhere safe. It isn’t right. He shouldn’t want her, shouldn’t sleep better by her side, but from the moment they’d made eye contact, he’s followed her trajectory like a plant drawn to the sun. 

He hasn’t allowed himself to think about Jessie, but now he’s blown open like a banksia, and she’s here, her presence hanging in the room like one of his ghosts. He’s let Furiosa get too close. He’s let himself get too close to her, without thinking about the consequences. He’d known, deep down in his bones, exactly what he was doing, but he’d swallowed it back and let his animal instinct carry him; in the unknown number of days since he’d held his dying wife in his arms, he’s not let himself be close to another human being until now, until he’d been snared by Furiosa’s gravity and it was too late to break free. He’s _tried_ to break free - out there in the desert, he’d struggled to leave just as much as he’d struggled to come back, an addict to the smell of her skin and the thud of his blood in her heartbeat. He’d been living on instinct for so long, violently swinging between _flee_ and fight, that when the switch abruptly flipped to _fuck_ he’d been completely blindsided. 

His rational brain is slowly catching up, blaring klaxons and shrilling in alarm. He’s like a dog that’s barrelled headlong into a crevice, and has suddenly realized he can’t back out. He _needs_ Furiosa like a fire needs oxygen; that much is obvious. The voices in his head are quieter when she’s around, and when her back is pressed against his, the nightmares are less intense. 

And when they whirl in battle, perfectly matched and perfectly in sync - well, that’s when he feels like a flare, blazing hot and bright into the sky. He shouldn’t feel the heat pool in his belly when she swipes black grease across her forehead. He shouldn’t want to lick the blood from her lips and suck bruises along the strong, graceful lines of her neck. He shouldn’t feel so _alive_ when she’s around, not when she’s everything he’s come to hate about the Wasteland. She’s committed atrocities. She’s served a warlord and done his bidding with utter ruthlessness. 

She stole five women and a War Rig, and brought down the leadership of the entire region in her quest for redemption. 

The Wasteland has shaped them both. They’ve been hammered by it, shaped by it like steel, but they’re still alive. First, Max had tried to tell himself he was only seeking vengeance, and when that hadn’t quieted the anguished roar in his skull, he’d sought solitude, telling himself he was different from the others. 

He isn’t any different. He is exactly the same, just another soul trying to survive the end of the world, and Furiosa is his kin. She has been from the very beginning. Instead of hiding away from her fate, she’s embraced it, throwing herself into her life and wringing success from the spiteful Citadel stones. 

He is not the man he was when he loved Jessie. The realization comes like a blow to the sternum, and he staggers to his feet, lurching across Furiosa’s tiny room to thrust his head into the window’s chill breeze. 

He wants to run, but he has nowhere to go. It’s never stopped him before, but suddenly he can’t leave, and he is crumpling like steel beneath the weight of it. He keeps giving pieces of himself to Furiosa, and she keeps accepting them, and it’s not at all what he wants, except it’s exactly what he wants, and the conflict is shredding him inside. Furiosa isn’t Jessie. Jessie is _dead_ , and if she were still alive, would she even love the man he’s become? Would he even have become this man if she hadn’t been taken away from him? 

If he hadn’t become this man, would he have still been drawn in by Furiosa? Furiosa, who has seen his violence and his _skill_ in wielding it, and still somehow can sleep with her back pressed against him. He doesn’t know if Jessie would be comfortable with the man he’s become. He doesn’t know if it’s healthy that Furiosa _is_. 

He’s shaking and raw, and he doesn’t even have a cacophony of accusing voices to bury himself in. Everything he’s thinking, all these thoughts - they’re all his own. He can’t disappear into hallucinations because there aren’t any. He can’t fight against the voices because they aren’t there. This is all on him. 

He needs a distraction, and he doesn’t have one, so he grabs his jacket and heads for the garage. He’s always found solace in his car, and more than anything, he needs some solace right now.


	104. Chapter 104

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **UPDATE 1/12/16 - I am going on a self-imposed hiatus. December was a little crazy, and January is shaping up to be equally crazy with two large renovation projects (but I finally get my fireplace yay!)**
> 
> **I am still 100% committed to continuing (and maybe even _finishing_ haha what) Length  & Breadth, but in the meantime, I'm giving the creative brainmeats a bit of a break. I know y'all are on tenterhooks, but I've been writing non-stop since May, and I need to recharge a bit. I'm not going to pressure myself by stating a deadline as to when I'll be back, but rest assured knowing I'm working on it. Thanks for your understanding! I will be back in fighting shape as soon as I can with more delicious angst.**
> 
> ****
> 
> I'd like to point y'all to the [gorgeous picture](http://ghostsjogging.tumblr.com/post/135579746177/my-gift-to-sacrificethemtothesquid-for-the) [ghostsjogging](http://ghostsjogging.tumblr.com) drew me for the tumblr Mad Max Secret Santa exchange. I keep looking at it and wanting to pet it. _One of these days, Max and Furiosa, one of these days we'll get you kids together...._

Max seeks solace in his car, but there isn’t any to be found. His Wasteland rebuild had been jury-rigged at best, and frankly, he’s impressed he’d made it back to the Citadel without leaving half the undercarriage strewn behind. Two of the engine cylinders on his hard-won Boss are clearly cracked, the heads broken beyond repair. Six out of eight isn’t terrible, but the crankshaft is wobbling in a way that looks like it’ll be trouble if it isn’t already, the timing chain is connected with scraps of wire, and he hasn’t even made it out of the engine compartment. 

There is hardly anything left of the original Interceptor, and the days since that first encounter have dissolved into the fog in his head. Survival has burned away his ability to feel any sort of affection for inanimate objects, but...it’s his car. It’s cradled him. Sheltered him. Protected him and shielded him. He’s replaced parts and welded breaks, but it’s still his car. 

Now that he’s...safe...now that he has a moment to take a breath and _really_ assess the damage, it makes his stomach clench. 

Really, he shouldn’t have made it out of the Rock Riders’ canyon. That he got all the way to the Citadel is nothing short of a miracle. He’s used up at least three lifetimes’ worth of luck. 

With help from a couple of the Repair Boys, Max eases the car up onto the risers and cranks it into the air. 

“Vee- _eight_ ,” murmurs Spade, his eyes wide with shock. “You _drove_ this??”

Keno makes a small noise of pained disbelief, reaching up to brush his fingers across a particularly deep crack in the frame. 

The frame is barely holding together, and so is Max. “Leave,” he manages, and flings his arms at them when they stare, bewildered. “Just - fucking - _go_.”

As they skitter off, he stuffs his fist in his mouth and tries not to keen. 

****

She’s not sure if Max wants company or not, so she’s done her best to avoid the garage all morning; she’s a coward, but when she felt him rocket out of bed, she couldn’t rouse frozen muscles, couldn't make herself reach out to him before he’d already gone. 

He had someone before. He had a _child_ before. She doesn’t know where he’s from, but it’s far enough away that he knew peace before he knew violence. 

All she can offer him is more violence. She isn’t a peaceful person. She might have been, once, but she wasn’t born Furiosa for nothing, and the last peaceful part of her died the day they put a bullet into Mary Jo Bassa’s skull. She may not be Joe’s Imperator anymore, but she isn’t any less violent. 

She wants Max. She didn’t realize it at first, didn’t understand the orange coals glowing in her belly, but she’s been blown into a blazing fury by the breath of the wind. Max is right there beside her - she’s felt it in the way he presses against her, surrendering his mouth to hers without hesitation - but she doesn’t know if they’re going to ignite further, or just burn each other out. 

He’d said the name like it was made of shattered glass, and the simple act of speaking was cutting him to pieces. She doesn’t know anything about Jessie beyond this bare fact, and it tells her more than she could ever need to know. 

Furiosa doesn’t want her name to be the razor in Max’s throat, but she’s afraid it’s too late. Her sharp edges are already digging deeply into his skin. 

She ends up in the Vault, helping Mari move some equipment around. The old Vuvalini misses nothing, and eases into conversation with casual gripes about aching joints and the mildly delinquent behavior of some of the younger clinic helpers, War Pups who are just starting to act like healthy children. 

“Cheedo’s up in the gardens with Dag,” Mari says, casually watching as Furiosa pits her weight against a heavy metal box. “This cooler weather is wreaking havoc on the - no, not right there, that one needs to go over here; the other one goes back in that corner.”

Furiosa grumbles. 

The Vuvalini snorts. “Respect your elders, girl,”

Furiosa’s prosthetic is hanging on the back of a nearby chair, but she only needs one human finger for this particular gesture. 

Mari just chuckles and leans back against the staircase. “Forgive an old woman for prying, but I take it the conversation last night was...productive?” She raises an eyebrow. “You both missed breakfast.”

“We talked.” It’s hard to explain. She shoves hard against the crate, and it scoots a single measly inch. 

She remembers being stuck in the bog, her heart hammering in her chest and the War Rig’s engine boiling as it strained against the mud. She feels like that with Max right now: moving forward in hard-won, painful increments, but still desperately far from safety. 

“I’m going to ask you something,” Mari says, “so forgive me if it’s too personal.” She crosses her arms. “Is Max the first man you’ve been with since Joe?”

It’s obvious this question is coming - and really, she should have expected it tens of days ago - but it still jars her so badly that Furiosa’s feet abruptly lose traction and her knees crack against the hard stone floor. She stays down for a long, dizzy moment, swallowing back the fluttering urge to vomit. It’s been almost twenty days since her last panic attack; she’s been working so hard on heading off these episodes, of inhaling through her nose and breathing from her belly until the buzzing recedes and her heartbeat returns to normal.

Mari waits, and calmly offers her a cup of water when Furiosa finally gets to her feet, sitting down on the crate to wait for her legs to stop shaking. 

Her human fingers curl around the plastic, feeling the cold seep through the material. “Sex is a commodity,” Furiosa makes herself say. “It can be traded-”

“I understand that the Citadel’s economy has been severely disrupted,” Mari says gently. “And I understand that your participation in it helped grant you your position. This is not a condemnation, pet. I just want to make sure you get where you want to go.”

_We are not things_. It’s a hard change from _do whatever it takes_ , and her tires are still skidding as she makes the turn. Furiosa tucks her stump against her chest. “Yes.” Her throat is almost too tight for the words. “Yes, he is.” And all at once, the frustration boils up, mixing uncomfortably with the ice in her stomach. “It’s so fucking _hard_!”

Mari clicks her tongue and eases onto the crate beside her, pulling Furiosa into her arms. “Out of the womb, my love, we’re all out of the womb together,” she hums in sympathy. “It’s the hardest journey a person can take, learning to trust again.”

Furiosa’s head is against her shoulder, and Mari’s clothes smell like dust and herbs, with the faint, sweet notes of ancient paper. There is suddenly a deep ache in her chest, her eyes prickling with tears. “I’m afraid I’m…” But what can she say? Too violent? Not good enough? Unworthy?

“He came back to you,” Mari points out, gnarled fingers carding through Furiosa’s sweat-damp curls. “You can’t make his choices for him.”

“He had a family once,” Furiosa mumbles. He had a woman and a child, and of course they’d loved him; he was Max, how could they not? And now they’re certainly dead, because if there was any chance they were alive, Max would have walked barefoot across the Salt to get back to them. 

Furiosa has done nothing in her life to deserve that level of devotion, not from anyone and especially not from Max. She’s had War Boys go to Valhalla under her command, and she’s been feared for her actions, but this is...different. When she’d taken command of the War Rig, when her crew declared their loyalty, she’d earned it through blood; she’d given them the chance to die shiny and chrome, but she’d kept them from dying needlessly. It had started as a practical desire not to constantly be training green Lancers, but it had ended up making a death under her command the most glorious exit any War Boy could hope for. 

She can accept Max wanting to fight by her side; that seems perfectly reasonable, since they’re well matched in terms of skill and physical ability. Anything more than that - it feels uncomfortable, dangerous, like a test she will most definitely fail. 

“Look at me, pet,” Mari says gently. Her dark eyes are kind. “You had a family, once, too.” She raises an eyebrow. “And, I might point out, we’re still here. Smaller, yes, but you still have me and Amy and the girls. Family is what you make it.” 

Furiosa swallows hard. 

Mari puts one hand to Furiosa’s cheek. “I can’t make it any easier, my girl. Mothers know, I wish I could. All I can say is...just take it slowly, eh, and keep talking to him. Although-” she purses her lips, “you’re going to have to figure out how to talk while sober. Our little still can’t keep up.”

Despite herself, Furiosa snorts back a watery chuckle. “I know.” 

“You might want to speak with Capable, at some point, if she’s willing,” Mari suggests. “She and that young Repair Boy, Keno...they’ve been seeing quite a bit of each other, from what I hear. And,” she adds, “if the time comes and you decide you’d like to use some, there are several options for contraception. I’ve got an herbal tincture that’s becoming quite popular.”

Furiosa shakes her head. “It won’t be necessary,” she makes herself say. “There was never...not even when Joe...”

She can feel the panic rising back up her throat. She can’t tell Mari about Joe, about everything that he tried. Mari is one of her mothers; she can’t tell her about the injections and pills, the chemical concoctions dreamed up by the previous Organic Mechanic. She can’t tell her about the nails. 

She doesn’t know how she expects Mari to react, but she doesn’t expect the resigned sigh. “All of you girls, then,” the Vuvalini murmurs. "I'd hoped...but ah, well." She peers intently at Furiosa. “You’re not alone in this, do you understand? You and Valkyrie...Athena, Tremble...even Tamar. It had to have been something in the environment. There’s no reason otherwise.”

“The world is poison,” Furiosa says dully. 

“Other women in this world bear children,” Mari counters. “None of your generation have. The Green Place was sour long before we even knew.” She shakes her head. “We shouldn’t have been so stubborn. We shouldn’t have stayed there so long. We should have kept moving.” She clutches at Furiosa’s hand. “I’m so sorry, my girl. I’m so very, very sorry.”

Perhaps Mari thinks it will come as a relief, to know her dysfunction is shared, but of all the trials she’s undergone, her infertility has come to be more a blessing than a curse. If she somehow had borne Joe children, she’d still have been ejected from the Vault after three pregnancies, and she knows herself well enough to understand that the mind-numbing tedium of being a Milker would have broken her. “We keep moving,” she says. 

“That we do, pet, that we do.” Mari presses a kiss to Furiosa’s temple. “This crate, though - perhaps it would be more useful over by the pool?”

Joe’s former Imperator rolls her eyes and groans.


	105. Chapter 105

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead. Just...resting, lol. 
> 
> You are all so patient with me. Hang in there.

Healing takes many forms. 

When Furiosa is done moving the crates, Mari crooks her finger, and guides her to a nearby chair. “I’m _fine_ -” she starts to protest, but the old Vuvalini shakes her head and continues to count Furiosa’s pulse. 

She listens to Furiosa’s lungs through a well-worn stethoscope, frowning. “May I see your scar?”

With a sigh, Furiosa unties her girdle and hikes up the hem of her blouse, her sweat-damp skin pimpling in the cool Vault air.

Mari’s practiced fingers seek out the hard knot of tissue. Furiosa’s ribs hardly twinge anymore, the place where Max stabbed her a knobbly pink ball of knitted skin. It reminds her of fabric, of her mother’s hands guiding hers to join two pieces of salvaged cloth. 

She was raised to believe that identity was a patchwork; her body is a living example, torn and stitched too many times to count. After spending so long as one of Joe’s mindless machines, she wonders if the moment in the Gigahorse was the moment she was finally free - not the moment she turned the wheel hard to the east, not the moment when Joe was finally dead, but the moment when Max slid his knife between her bones. Maybe that was her first free breath in seven thousand days, the one he’d stabbed her to let her take. 

Freedom isn’t something that happens in a moment. She’d thought it was, that once she was away from the Citadel, she’d somehow be better. That once she was away from Joe and his poison, she’d finally be able to breathe. She’s coming to understand that isn’t how it works. Joe is dead, the Citadel is becoming the new Green Place, but there’s still a hard hitch in her throat when she takes more than one flight of stairs. 

“I’m still fighting that cough,” she admits, smoothing her shirt back down. 

Mari hums in sympathy. “Your body’s healing, pet. Give it time.”

She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, but Mari sees it in her face anyway. “Look at me, girl,” the Vuvalini says gently. “You are not a monolith. You are allowed some weakness, same as the rest of us.”

Even just hearing the words makes her feel raw and vulnerable, scraped clean in a place that isn’t meant to be exposed to air. Furiosa knows about weakness. “I’m _trying_ ,” she says, and it comes out far more plaintive than she intends. 

“I know you are, love,” Mari says. She raises an eyebrow. “You’ve come a long way, you know.”

That’s...unexpected, and all Furiosa can do is blink. 

“Look at yourself.” Mari raises an eyebrow. “A leader, a mother for the women looking up to her... A woman who is carefully considering how she takes a lover...those are hardly traits to describe old Joe’s Imperator, wouldn’t you say?”

It doesn’t, but none of it sounds like Furiosa, either; somehow, it _is_ , and there’s a deep ache in her chest. She can’t be those things, but it’s already happened, and this knowledge burns at odds with the chaos in her heart. 

She doesn’t feel very much like a machine anymore. It’s a reflex, to look for her metal core, but the conversation with Max - everything with Max - somehow buzzes in her bones, an energy whose influence she can’t shake. She’s gone shivery and uncomfortable at the realization, like something naked and newly-born. “He had a family,” she says. “Before.” The words come out like raised arms, defensive. 

“You’ve said,” Mari reminds her. “Having something once doesn’t mean one stops wanting it. We are not by our nature solitary creatures, however hard we may try.”

In the hours since that conversation, Max’s confession is still spinning in her head, a steadily squealing belt she can’t ignore. The more she thinks about it, the more it bothers her. He had a family. He had a _family_. He had a woman, a child. 

There are things she cannot give him. She has never thought of herself as a mother; there were days during her time in the Vault when she laid in bed and tried to will her womb into quickening, but that was out of desperation, not any personal desire. None of Joe’s children’s mothers ever got to see their babies beyond their weaning, and if her own arms remained empty, it was less a heartbreak. 

Practical. She’d swallowed back her grief and let the heat of her anger become a forge. She’d welded together impenetrable walls, and when her womb failed, she'd made herself anew. She couldn't create life with Joe's seed, but at his hand she could take it. 

She’s afraid she’ll be nothing better to Max than a poor substitute for the family he’s lost. He’d said he couldn’t have a child again, but she’s afraid he’s just saying that out of bleak grief; she herself had been so sure she could never touch another man after breaking free of Joe, but now here she is, aching for Max in a way that is all the more painful for being so unexpected. 

“Furiosa,” Mari says quietly. “Give it time. It’s a journey. A process.”

Furiosa has never done anything except all at once. She is a torn waterskin, her flesh splitting apart as the pressure of thousands of days’ bottled-up emotion comes flooding out. She should be thinking about the Bullet Farm, she should be wracking her brain and trying to figure out who the mysterious Blood is (or are), but instead she’s pushing crates around the Vault and trying not to scream. 

“Where do you want this one?” she asks Mari, and the older woman just shakes her head. 

“Stubborn as Jo Bassa ever was,” Mari sighs, and points. “Next to the stairs, please.”

****

When Mari has no more crates to move, Furiosa finds herself at loose ends. She checks in with Capable, but the latter is deeply buried in a stack of ledgers and squinting at intimidatingly tiny text. “Dag’s up top,” Capable offers, inadvertently smearing ink on her forehead as she swipes at a wayward lock of hair. “I think she’s moving seedlings.”

Up on the terrace, Dag immediately thrusts a basket of old plastic bottles at Furiosa. “Cut here,” she instructs, indicating a point just near the top of a bottle. “Right where it starts to narrow.”

Furiosa raises an eyebrow. “Watering cups...?”

Dag shakes her head. “Greenhouses. Keeps the plants cozy when it’s cold out.”

So she takes out her knife and slices through the brittle plastic. The bottles won’t last long in the hungry sun, maybe a season or two if Dag is lucky, but Furiosa can see that it’s a good idea: there are already little domes dotting the terrace beds, and the plants inside seem stronger and less spindly than their exposed counterparts. 

Hothouse flowers. It’s a term she doesn’t understand, but the words had been growled by the original Organic Mechanic during her time in the Vault. It had seemed like an insult at the time, delivered with a knowing sneer, but now, she’s not so sure. These girls were kept in the Vault, but Furiosa is starting to realize they’re somehow stronger for it. 

She wonders if she can say the same for herself. She doesn’t think she can. 

The distant winter sun is low on the horizon, flooding the landscape with orange light and purple shadows, when Keno seeks her out. 

“Boss?” He’s hanging back in uncertainty. 

She’s stopped counting how many bottles she’s done, but her human hand is cramping hard. She sheathes the knife and shakes out her fingers. “What is it?”

He chews on his lips, and finally blurts out, “Max’s car’s broken.”

Furiosa blinks. She’d heard the sound of his engine, skillfully calibrated but still skipping every fifth spark. “Do whatever you can. Anything he needs, it’s his.” Keno nods - because _of course_ , Max can have whatever he needs - but she can see the conflict creasing the chalk on his face. “What is it?”

“It’s broken,” he repeats. “It’s _really_ broken.”

“Pull some of the War Boys in if you need help, then. Tell Ace I said-”

“It’s...it’s gone rust,” Keno says, and Furiosa sucks in a breath, because _oh_. 

Joe’s War Boys revered the powerful V8 and the chassis it powered. Their own bodies were broken beyond repair, but a car was as immortan as their leader. Parts could be replaced, cracks welded, and dents hammered back into shape. A Boy expected his car to outlive him - it was the nature of life, to pass your wheel on when you went to Valhalla. Anything that was metal could be fixed; it was the unfortunate inferiority of human flesh to be so fragile. A car would last forever. 

Except when it can’t. 

She’d only seen it twice in her seven thousand days, a car gone to rust. Too damaged to function as a whole, it was remaindered with the ceremony and circumstance that Joe denied his people, a funeral complete with War Boys and Repair Boys wailing and pounding on their chests. The car was carefully broken down, pieces passed on to favored drivers to add to their own rides. If a car went to rust, its driver had gone to Valhalla before it. 

But this is Max’s car, and this is _Max_ -

“Are you sure?” she croaks. “You have to be sure-”

He nods miserably. “Frame is barely holding together in a dozen places, and that’s just what we can _see_. It’s eaten up. Engine’s cracked in four cylinders, piston gone on a fifth. Transmission’s ground raw between second and third, and the body - must’ve been some fire, because the metal’s gone soft in places. He’s got two tanks in the back, but no way it’ll hold that much weight with those things even half full.”

She doesn’t know what to feel. The War Rig is gone, but...she’s made her peace with that. It isn’t _broken_. It’s entombed in rock, an everlasting monument to the last moments of an escape she barely remembers. She’d renounced any emotional tie to the Rig the moment she turned east, just as surely as she’d renounced any loyalty to her War Boy crew. She’d been a vessel herself at that moment, a vehicle whose sole purpose was to carry away Joe’s Wives and leave him wounded. 

Max did not willingly give up his car. Furiosa can think of three things Max has ever given willingly - his blood, his jacket, and the banksia seed - and that she is the recipient to all three is a deep and raw chasm in her chest. 

His car is broken. His _car_ , and he had a family, and now they’re dead, and she remembers his hands in her hair as he crushed the breath from her with a kiss. She cannot be everything he needs her to be. She can’t be what anyone needs her to be. She isn’t a mother, she isn’t a woman. She’s a vehicle, a machine, blank-eyed and resolute beneath her Imperator’s grease. 

“Where is he?” Furiosa makes herself say. If he ran, if he took a motorcycle or another car and disappeared into the waste, she won’t blame him. She wants to run right now herself, panic exploding inside her lungs like a shredded tire. 

“In the car,” Keno says. He worries at a scab at his elbow. “Hasn’t moved since morning.”

She makes herself take a slow breath. He’d been the one to drive her into the desert and offer her his own gun when she wasn’t sure which path she wanted to take. _We keep moving,_ he’d told her. He’d smelled of sweat and panic, but his gaze never wavered. 

_It’ll be a hard day_. 

“Thank you, Keno,” Furiosa says, and pushes herself to her feet. Dag’s cut bottles scatter at her feet. “I’ll go talk with him.”

 _We keep moving_.

It's not comfortable. It's not pleasant. It's hard, and it hurts, but she doesn’t know how to do anything else.


	106. Chapter 106

Furiosa knows where Max is, but in a fit of nerves, she can’t quite make herself take the hewn stone stairs to the main garage. She stops by the kitchens and snags two dried amaranth squares, the seedy, hard-baked bars that Jilly and the others have developed for long-term storage. “One of these days, you’re gonna eat with the rest of them,” the head cook calls out, shaking her head. “Gonna eat in that hall like a person, not some shadowy skulker.” But there’s no real heat behind her words, just mild reproach. Two hundred days before, Jilly would have made barely made eye contact with an Imperator, and Furiosa feels suddenly naked without her thick mask of grease. 

She isn’t Joe’s Imperator anymore - she isn’t _anyone’s_ Imperator anymore - and it’s starting to show in every interaction. Jilly is pushing boundaries, her tone just shy of being insolent. It isn’t anything the cook would have attempted under Joe’s rule, but Joe is gone, and Jilly is an impudent soul, testing her limits, and Furiosa finds it...well, truthfully, it’s terrifying. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” The question pops out before she can swallow it back, but mercifully her voice is level, not plaintive. She’d spent so long clawing her way up the ranks just to save her own skin, and even though she knows there probably isn’t a gory death waiting for her, it’s suddenly terrifying to realize she can no longer rely on the weight of her Imperator status for protection. 

“What, should I run and hide?,” Jilly snorts. “Those days are over, thank the spirits.”

“But even after...before?”

“You were fair, before. You weren’t one of us, but you were fair. Never took more than you were owed, never demanded more than what your crews needed. Now, nobody knows what you are. You gonna flip and become the new Joe? Maybe not. But maybe you are.” 

“That isn’t what I want.”

“You don’t know what you want,” Jilly says shrewdly. “And I don’t know if that makes you dangerous, but maybe it does. You got broke when it all changed over, and a broke animal bites everyone.” She considers. “But am I afraid? Don’t think I am. For most of us, yeah, this is better, but for you...maybe not. I got eyes. But I know that even if it’s bad for you, even if you decide you can do better than Joe, there’s enough of us now it won’t work. You won’t make it.”

Furiosa will never be a warlord, because the Citadel won’t allow it. She makes herself nod. “Good. That’s- that’s good.”

Jilly raises an eyebrow, and shakes her head. “If you don’t need anything, I got mouths to feed, and potatoes that aren’t going to chop themselves. Come back later and eat properly, eh?”

It’s a tenuous peace, but perhaps it’s only tenuous in Furiosa’s head. 

 

****

It’s well after midday and the garages are buzzing with activity, the crash of mallets pounding sheetmetal back into shape amid the harsh burr of grinders. Max’s car sits at the edge of the chaos, streaked with dust and cradling its driver. If she disregards the sag in the forward suspension, Furiosa could almost imagine never talking with Keno. Max’s car could be fine, simply waiting its turn on the lifts. Its scratches could be buffed out. With a little spit and maintenance, it could be churning up sand and spearing Buzzards at a moment’s notice. 

The damage is largely invisible, and the enormity of it doesn’t really hit her until she sees Max, slouched in the driver’s seat, staring vacantly out of eyes gone red and puffy. 

“Hey,” she says quietly, and his eyelids flutter. Carefully, she slides into the other side, easing herself into the space where a passenger seat used to be. The floorboard creaks ominously beneath her weight.

She doesn’t ask if he’s okay. He looks like shit, and clearly hasn’t moved in many hours. There’s a plastic jug by his right foot, half-full of amber liquid. 

“Should be drinking more water,” she observes. “And walking a bit, maybe.”

He doesn’t even shrug. 

“I brought you food.” She offers up one of the amaranth bars. He takes it mechanically, holding it in his hand like he’s forgotten how to raise it to his mouth. 

They sit. She picks at her own bar, blunt fingernails separating tiny crumbs that dissolve behind her teeth. Beyond the cracked and dusty windshield, the Repair Boys scuttle around, busily and studiously avoiding Max’s car. They aren’t even looking in the car’s direction. She can see the tension in the white-painted shoulders, the way the Boys look to Keno when they can’t bear to look at Max’s car. It’s bad enough to have a car in the garage that’s gone to rust, and for it to be _Max’s_ car, when they revere him with a kind of terrified idolization…

Keno cuffs Maz on the back of the head and points him to a gaggle of Pups near the rig. She can’t hear his words, but Maz and his entourage disappear into the undercarriage of the rig, and Keno heads toward the other garage. 

He’s keeping everyone away. Letting Max mourn in private. It isn’t the sort of thing that was allowed under Joe’s rule - only the Immortan had any real privacy, with the Wives being allowed more than anyone else - and the thoughtfulness of the gesture makes Furiosa’s chest ache. 

The shadows at the garage entrance stretch and engulf the workshop, the desert twilight turning everything bruised and blue. The Boys trickle out for the evening meal, and most of them don’t return; even with the renewed trade with Gastown, lamp oil is still a precious commodity, used only under extreme duress. The week’s quota had been consumed days earlier, when Keno had needed to smelt some new pieces for the rig. 

Sometime after sunset, it becomes clear that Max really isn’t going to move, so Furiosa slips out, coming back with the heavy Vuvalini blanket from her own room. “Are you going to sleep here tonight?” she asks quietly. 

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, more of a breath than a vocalization; it’s like the air in his lungs is too heavy to even be turned into speech. 

It’s as much an answer as she’s going to get. Nodding half to herself, she settles back into the passenger space, tucking half of the blanket between her and the cold metal floor, and the other half around Max’s legs. 

He gives her a startled glance, as if just realizing she’s there. She meets his eyes, feeling calm descend into her bones in the face of his panic. She recognizes this person. It’s the same terrified, desperate Fool that hijacked her War Rig and almost got them all killed. She talked him down when he was feral and bolting, and she can talk him down again. 

Even more than that, he’d handed her a gun, and then he’d handed her a banksia. There are emotions warring in her chest that she can’t even begin to name, and they’re all suffused with the musk of his skin. 

“I sleep better when you’re around,” she says quietly. “And if you’re gonna be here…” She swallows, carefully smoothing the blanket over her knees. “Is this okay?” His eyelids flicker, and she realizes he’s close to _tears_. He is only very nearly holding together. “Do you want to talk?”

He shakes his head, a quick, savage movement. 

“Is it all right if I sleep?”

A brief nod. 

Something endlessly deep wells up in her throat, words she hasn’t said in thousands of days rising like the sweet wash of bile. She can’t say them, even if she knew for certain they’re what she means to say. It’s been too long, and the weight of them is strange and heavy in her mouth. 

Instead, she reaches over with her human hand, lacing her fingers between his and resting her head on his arm. She can feel him shudder in the darkness, each breath sharp and wet. 

She squeezes his fingers and presses her cheek against the crook of his his elbow. It’s a hard day. It’s always a hard day. 

Together, they keep moving.


	107. Chapter 107

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehh, not super happy with this, but kicking it out so I can get moving on the next section. Back to the action!

He doesn’t sleep. Or rather, he might sleep, but it’s filled with the same twisting miasma of visions and ghosts, and the nightmares are indistinguishable from the waking world. Nothing is concrete. Nothing is certain. There’s only the flicker of voices and faces, incoherent white static at the edges of his consciousness. 

It hurts. It _hurts_. He is gutshot and bleeding, he is paralyzed and dying, his ribs crumbling like ruined struts beneath the constraint of his skin. He wants to take the wheel, wants to press his foot to the gas and _go_ , but if he touches the leather, it’ll come away on his fingertips, cracked and flaking. The accelerator is fragile as bleached bone, waiting to snap under the slightest pressure. The fuel lines are his veins, stripped from his flesh and strung up in bitter air, quivering with every terrified heartbeat. 

What was it that mechanic had said? _She’s meanness brought to music_. He’s never thought of the car as a woman. Maybe in those first few hours, when it was the Pursuit Special, black as oil and fast as sound, but out on the road, everything was stripped away - its name, its purpose, his own. The car was the car, and he wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t even a man; they were one unit, flesh and metal. 

He’d been driving to revenge, and then driving for survival. He doesn’t know what he’s driving for now, and the cold, dry vacuum of an unknowable future sucks the air from his lungs in great, shuddering gasps. 

He remembers the words even long after he’s lost the mechanic’s name. Another man, named for a bird? His friend. A man who’d been murdered, right before Jessie-

It’s all fragments, and it slips through his skull like sand. The memories crumble when he tries to piece them together, rotting like the metal that surrounds him. 

Goose. His name was Goose. 

Max lets the voices consume him. He knows guilt. He knows shame. It burns with an acid familiarity, and if he can’t hear himself think, he can’t think about the broken metal shell around his body. He can’t think about everything he meant to do, and how-

He’d tried to leave. He’d _tried_. He’d tried to escape, but then they’d killed Goose and Jess and _Sprog_ , and he’d gone terminal crazy just like he’d always feared he would. 

He’d gone crazy because he didn’t have any reason _not_ to. Jess had been his anchor, and when she’d-

He’d just spun out. He hadn’t been able to stop. 

He hadn’t _wanted_ to stop-

The pressure in his chest is overwhelming, and he bites down hard on his fist, anything to focus the pain into a manageable point. 

_Help us, Max._

_Why didn’t you help us? You promised to help us!_

_Max Rockatansky._

_Where were you, Max?_

Nowhere. He’s been across the salt and back, and in all this time, he hasn’t moved an inch. 

 

****

 

It’s dark when a new voice cuts through the haze. 

“You know what your problem is?”

Max jerks toward the speaker, but it’s only the wild-haired old Vuvalini woman. She’s perched on a nearby workbench, peering at him through the brocken car window with her rifle upended between her legs. There’s a tube of dirty gray fabric stretched over the gun’s stock – she’s darning a sock, he realizes. She’s darning a sock on the butt of her gun, the tiny silver needle pinched delicately between her fingers.

It’s a _really_ good idea, and he suddenly has plans for his own threadbare socks, assuming he can get thread around here somewhere-

“You, boy.” She waves the needle at him. “I’m talking to you. Listen a moment, will you?”

He grunts. He’s suddenly aware of Furiosa asleep beside him, her head a steadying weight on his shoulder.

“Your problem,” says the old Vuvalini, “is that you’re holding on to the wrong things.”

He blinks. He’s barely holding onto _anything_ \- 

“I said _listen_ , daft mug,” the Vuvalini snaps. “Focus on my voice. It’s all in your head, you should be able to do that much.”

Max scowls. The seductive thud of oblivion echoes beneath his heartbeat, but he gulps hard, swallowing it down. 

“Better.” The Vuvalini turns back to her darning. “Not all things can be fixed. You know this. Sometimes when a thing gets broken, that’s the end.” Pale thread is woven around the edges of the hole, the gap in the fabric coming together with a quick, practiced motion. “Some things, though, you gotta fix. If you don’t fix ‘em...” she looks at him expectantly. 

“...you’ll go insane,” he mumbles. 

He can see the ocean, the little whitecaps tossed beneath a bright, colorless sky. There’s the hiss of sand across the dunes, the gray-green scrub clinging to the gritty soil against the wind. They’d bought the house already built, him and Jessie; it was an old beach cabin, and they’d spent that first scorching summer in a languid haze, coming up with grandiose heat-dreams about the ways they’d renovate and remodel. He can almost see Jess, her windswept hair a wild crown, Sprog squirming in her arms and screeching at the sky. 

“The thing with the world,” the Vuvalini tells him, “is that you don’t get a say in what happens.”

He knows. Oh, he knows. He was young, once, but it wasn’t a lesson he needed to learn, and he’s still had to learn it over and over and over again, until it’s the one certainty in this crazy universe. Max Rockatansky is completely and utterly helpless against the workings of the cosmos, and fuck if he doesn’t know it. 

Except, she’s still eyeing him like he’s missing the point. “Bad things _and_ good things, boy.”

Oh. 

Max thinks of Sprog, of his downy hair and bright eyes. 

He remembers Jess coming to him with the news, her face a naked war between terror and joy. They’d both cried, she openly and honestly, Max snuffling into her hair and trying desperately to pretend he wasn’t. Later, they’d sat on the beach, watching the stars come out and talking quietly. 

“What kind of world is this,” he remembers saying. “How can we bring a kid into this, Jess?” He’d been on the scene of a murder not twelve hours earlier, and the blood was still sharp in his nose. 

“How can we not?” She’d hugged her knees. “This is our chance to do something good in the world. We’re making a _person_. How can that be bad?”

He still believed people could be good, then. He’d still been a kid himself, lanky in his new uniform and swaggering with the hubris of a youth trying on the confidence of a man. He’d held Jess close and thought of his father, of his father’s shoes, of all things. They’d always been so shiny and perfect. 

That night, after Jess had gone to sleep, he’d stayed up and polished his motorcycle boots. Those boots are long gone, and the shoes he’s wearing now are cobbled together from old tires and leather with unsavory origins. 

“Look at you,” says the Vuvalini, not unkindly. She’s finished darning the sock, and is now pulling it back over a gnarled old foot. “You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you?”

Max blinks. 

“You never died your own self.” She shakes her head. “There’s no reason for you so spend so much time up here in your head, with all this death. Me, I belong here. I know that. It was bound to happen, and it did, and none of it’s a surprise. But you - you’re still breathing, boy.” She frowns at him. “You got more life left in you than ten other people. Should be enjoying it.”

He’s suddenly very aware of Furiosa, of the slow and even cadence of her breathing. 

“Maybe you needed something,” the Vuvalini says, and nods to Furiosa. “Maybe you got something now.”

His heart is pounding in his throat, a malignant lump he can’t swallow back. 

“Comes a time when you can’t go back, but you already know that.” She raises an eyebrow. “You can’t ever get back what got took.”

He knows. He _knows_ -

“Then why keep trying?”

Because at some point, he’s going to have to embrace the fact that Jess and Sprog are _gone_ , and there hasn’t been a moment when they’re not lurking in the corner of his vision, hiding behind his eyelids and haunting his dreams. He will never be free of them, and he never _wants_ to be. He doesn’t deserve to be free, not when they needed him, and he-

The blackness sucks the air from his lungs, and he’s staggering out of the car, a cacophony of accusing voices swarming like black flies. 

_You let us die!_

_You let us die!_

_Max. Where were you?_

_Why didn’t you help us?_

Blindly, he gropes for purchase, and a chunk of the fender shears in his hand, sharp metal biting into his skin. 

_Max-_

_Where were you, Max-_

When he comes to, he’s sitting on the floor of the garage. Furiosa is crouched in front of him, pressing a strip of dirty cloth against his bloody palm. 

“Hey,” she says quietly. “It’s all right.”

It’s not all right. It never has been, not for either of them. It’s never been right, and it’s never been easy, and _she knows that_. She’s always known it, but she’s still moving. She’s kept him moving. 

“I, mm.” His lips feel heavy and numb, his tongue thick with dehydration and disuse. She looks at him, face inscrutable, waiting patiently for him to finish. 

Someday, maybe, he’ll put his arms around her, kiss her forehead and tell her she’s beautiful. Before the world fell, that was how he’d been taught to woo a woman. It had worked with Jessie; she’d snicker and halfheartedly push him away, but he’d make puppy eyes and persist, and she’d end up laughing and melting against his chest. 

He’d liked that. Jess had made him feel so strong. She hadn’t been fragile, but she’d let Max be her protector. He’d provided for his family, and then come home to the comfort of his wife and son. 

He’d felt like a man, right until the moment he failed them. 

He’s beyond that now. Any notions of gender roles evaporated with the lakes when the world fell. He’s older now, although how much older, he doesn’t really know. Time became thin and indistinct in the desert, and he’d been more than willing to let it slip away. He’d run from his home because he couldn’t escape the violence lurking beneath his skin, and he’d let the violence consume him, because he had nothing to hold him back, nothing to keep him anchored. 

Except, he’d made it alive out of a blistering storm, and a woman with grease on her forehead had unflinchingly stood up and snarled, “You want that thing off your face?” And then, when the walls of the canyon soared up around them, she’d quietly ceded control of the War Rig and somehow granted him the first agency he’d had since the world fell. 

Furiosa is looking at him the same way right now, concerned, her face wide and unthreatening. Her eyes are green and stained with old blood, and she has one arm and a whole army of ghosts, and she is sitting in front of him, chilly human fingers pressing the makeshift bandage against his hand. 

Jess. Furiosa. Furiosa and Jess. He thought for so long he could never love another human as much as he loved Jessie, and suddenly there’s Furiosa, and he doesn’t know how to feel. What is the proper amount of guilt for something like this, for surviving when those he loved did not? He is utterly undeserving of solace, but there is a kernel inside of him that came alive at her scent, the roots twining and greening as he circled around her. Something about Furiosa had brought him back to life before he realized he’d ever considered himself dead, and he’s raw and tender. There is too much happening in his chest and in head, and it’s a wild, desperate storm he doesn’t know how to weather. 

_Max Rockatansky_

He glances reflexively at the workbench, but the Vuvalini is gone. The garage is empty save for the two of them on the cold stone floor. What that what the old woman meant? 

“I, hmm...I need you.” The works are cracked and honest. His hands clench convulsively around hers. 

She doesn’t flinch. “I’m here.”

It’s hard to breathe, the air gone dense and hot in his throat. “Hey,” she says, and presses her forehead against his.

He aches. He aches and it feels like he’s been running across loose sand, his muscles burning and bones ground to dust. There isn’t enough air in the entire world, and he sucks it in with desperate gulps. He’s spinning like a satellite careening out of orbit, and the only thing holding him in place is the pressure of Furiosa’s forehead against his own. 

They sit like that for a long time. She doesn’t let go.


	108. Chapter 108

The Bullet Farm smolders for ten days, gone silent and still. The lights that for Joe’s entire reign twinkled in the desert haze have gone dark, and to Capable’s eye, the wasteland suddenly feels too empty. It was sheer hubris to have those lights, as if Kalashnikov were daring the scavs and raiders to throw themselves against his walls, but now that they’re gone, the high, sloping slag piles remind her of a meteor crater. “The end of the dinosaurs,” Miss Giddy had told them once, after explaining the giant lizards that had come before. Toast had loved dinosaurs, demanding more and more information until their elderly minder finally plead ignorance. To Capable, it had seemed the ultimate tragedy, that these huge beasts had died and left only tiny descendents in their wake. She’d wondered if humanity was headed the same way, if in a million years there would be another creature, some unimaginable inheritor of the ruined earth, to dig up and study her own bones. 

The Buzzards have disappeared. On the one hand, it’s a relief, because Furiosa’s crews aren’t running on their rims trying to keep up, but on the other…They were low on ammunition before the Buzzard siege, and while the Buzzards were well-supplied, they were also fearsome opponents, and any salvaged bullets or guzzoline have just gone right back into defense. “We’ve got enough for maybe a single wave,” Ello says at the next Council meeting. The Buzzards are brawlers, and the weapons they carried reflect that; the Vuvalini are the sharpest snipers, and the last few cartridges are carefully tucked in their pockets and pouches. “We need to take on the Bullet Farm.”

Mari shakes her head vehemently. “Not when there’s still smoke coming up. It’ll be hazardous enough just being on the ground. It’s not worth the health risk.”

“Been going to the Bullet Farm our whole lives,” scoffs Ello. “Only a coward’s afraid of a little fukushima _smoke_.”

“You don’t even know what that word means,” Amy grumbles. “Time was, ‘Fukushima’ actually meant something.”

He slaps his chest, annoyed. “I been shot four times! See my scars? I en’t soft, and maybe we en’t supposed to die historic, but I’m not sitting here like a Milker while stuff we need sits there rusting!”

Plenty’s head rears up. “Our milk _makes_ it so you en’t soft, you fucking-” 

“I can dig out a bullet,” Mari snaps. “But once lead gets in your bones, there’s no one who can dig that out.” She turns to Capable. “No one’s going over there. Not until the fires are out. It’s too risky.”

“Agreed.”

Ello sits back down, but glowers behind crossed arms. “It’s smoke,” he mutters. “Just fucking smoke.”

Capable meets Keno’s eyes. The War Boys have been chafing from a lack of action, especially Miro. He’d only defected from Capto’s crew for his little brother, and in recent days, the boy’s been listless and clingy, skirting an illness; as a consequence, he's been itching for a fight, goading Ello at every turn. The others take their cues from Ello, and the atmosphere in the Citadel has been increasingly tense. 

“We wait,” Furiosa announces. She’s standing by the doorway, leaning against the wall. “We keep our schedule with Gastown. We make repairs. We take care of ourselves.” She glances over at the Vuvalini. “When Mari thinks it’s safe, then we’ll investigate.”

Ello’s sour expression deepens, and remains. 

****

The longest day of the year comes and goes; only Cheedo makes an effort to note its passing, on Dag’s behalf. The latter is eight months along, swollen like a waterlogged corpse and about as cheerful. She’s had to pass most of her gardening duties off to Nakmin and the others, and mostly spends her days winding bandages and doing other stationary tasks. Even with the company of her sisters in the evenings, she’s still uncomfortable and anxious, chewing the skin around her fingernails down to blood. “Gonna be a boy,” she mutters. “Schlanger like his father. Should’ve just drank it away...”

“You don’t mean that,” Cheedo soothes, working her thumbs into the sole of Dag’s foot. “Remember what Keeper told you. It might be a girl.”

“Won’t be a girl,” Dag says sullenly, wincing as Cheedo hits a particularly tender spot. “Not with all the kicking and punching-”

“Kicking is good,” says Mari gently. “Lets you know the little one’s still alive.”

“Hmph. Violent baby from violent seed.”

Capable is deep in her ledgers. Guzzoline is tight. Food is tight. The crops have done well, but they’re still recovering from the siege, and the weather’s been so cold that the last batch of seedlings wilted in the dirt. Nakmin has years of experience, but Dag - Dag has the magic touch, and since she’s been off her feet, it’s almost like the growing things are withering in her absence. 

Down below, the Wretched aren’t doing much better. The chilly nights have stagnated the hatching of the grubs that are the main source of protein, and the people are suffering for it. When the wind is just right, the smell of roasting meat rises into the towers; Capable is a Gastown girl born and bred, and she knows the difference between seared lizard and barbecue human. 

Dag’s had two labor scares, where she’s thought the baby was coming and panicked completely. The other sisters have collectively agreed that one of them should be nearby at all times, which has been fine for Toast and Cheedo - Cheedo adores Dag above all other people, and sleeps curled against her sister’s back - but Capable is feeling overwhelmed. She wants to sit with Dag, but if she doesn’t check in with the various groups in the Citadel, inevitably Riz will unthinkingly say something that pisses off one of the Milk Mothers, and Almond will gossip to Nita who complains to Jilly, who will threaten insurrection. Without an outside threat to unite them, the tensions between those who worshipped Joe and those who reviled him escalates at the slightest provocation, and if Capable doesn’t spend the greater part of her day smoothing over imagined slights, the entire Citadel infrastructure will collapse into chaos. 

There’s also the issue of the Blood to contend with. She’s spent hours poring over the Citadel records, and there isn’t a single reference to any such faction. The Bullet Farm has been the exclusive provenance of the Bullet Farmer for its entire existence. She’s certain that the Actuary has information, but the letters she’s written, ranging from sweetly wheedling to outright threats, have been tersely rebuffed. 

She is exhausted and cranky. On top of everything, it’s been three days since she’s had anything more than passing words with Keno. He’s just as stressed, chasing leaking irrigation pipes and trying to rebuild the rig’s engine in time for the next fuel run. They steal time in shadowed corners, ducking into empty rooms to spend a few precious moments frantically kissing. There’s always a Repair Boy or Pup or kitchen worker to interrupt them, someone with a question or problem or concern, and she has to walk away feeling empty and unfulfilled.

Of all the sisters, it’s Toast who is the most sympathetic. “Look,” she finally says, exasperated. “I’ll stay with Dag. Get out of here.”

“No, it’s fine - weren’t you doing something with the others?”

Toast shakes her head. “Ello’s impossible to be around, and Miro is even worse.” She rolls her eyes. “Besides, I can _smell_ the hormones wafting off you. Go get laid. It’ll make us all less crazy.”

It feels selfish, but Capable can’t protest. She kisses Toast’s cheek, which earns another dramatic sigh, and then she definitely does _not_ run down to the garage. Keno’s alone, working late, the rig’s engine largely in pieces on the floor around him.

It still feels selfish when she grabs his hand and drags him up the stairs. It’s cold out on the terraces, the stars pinpricks of ice in the moonless sky, but his hungry mouth is warm against hers, and his body is even warmer. He’s hesitant to touch her, but she guides his hand where she wants, and for a few sweet, blistering moments, the weight of her responsibilities melts away.


	109. Chapter 109

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter. Sorry. The next one looks big, and I needed this out of the way. 
> 
> You all are so good to me. Thank you so much for your patience. I've got the next section just about worked out, so hopefully it won't take me a week to post. 
> 
> Love you all!

The break they’re hoping for happens by accident. 

They’re in Gastown, and Furiosa is backing up the rig so Riz and Miro can connect it to the full tanker of guzzoline. Their Gastown guard has been increasingly relaxed; they’re wary of Furiosa, and they give Max a very wide berth on the rare occasions he chooses to disembark the rig, but for the most part, it seems like Gastown has accepted the change in Citadel leadership with remarkable nonchalance. 

Then again, this is Gastown. This acrid city has seen Joe’s repulsive son Scabrous rise to power and fall just as quickly, along with failed invasion attempts by an endless number of would-be warlords looking to seize one of the Wasteland’s most lucrative strongholds. Furiosa may have spiked the head of a Gastown Imperator on the front of her rig, but instead of taking over, she’s brought water and reestablished trade. By Gastown standards, she’s practically a pacifist. 

There hasn’t been a breath of information about the Blood since Max brought back the name and nothing else. The Actuary hasn’t communicated except through letter, and then it’s only terse, opaque words in handwriting that suggests he’s actually farmed out the response to an amanuensis. Capable’s started to mutter about actually wanting to meet with him, but Furiosa shut that down immediately. Trade has been reestablished; trust definitely has not, especially with the nebulous specter of the Blood hanging over the desert. 

The break happens by accident, an idle complaint by a bored guardian. 

“Glad it’s you lot,” one of the Gastown War Boys mutters, leaning on his lance as the tanker is connected and topped off. “Those Farmers are suddenly acting like they own the place.”

“What, you got Farmers here?” Ello asks casually, one elbow up on the running board. 

Even behind the gas mask and ochre-yellow paint, the Gastown War Boy’s disgust is palpable. “Think they can take over,” he scowls. “Like they own us.”

Ello’s eyes flick up to Furiosa. “That’s mediocre, mate.”

“Worse than that,” the War Boy spits, warming to the subject. “First, they just sweep in here, calling _us_ traitors, because they’re the True Followers or sommat-”

The War Boy talks. Ello listens. Furiosa keeps her face impassive, but her heart is pounding with the urge to jump from the driver’s seat and wring every drop of information from the Gastown Boy. She can’t hear exactly what’s being said, and she _has_ to trust that Ello will get the information in a way that won’t let the War Boy know how badly they want it, or tip off the Bullet Farmers to the fact the Citadel knows about their shadowy new overlords. 

It’s been one hundred and forty-three days since Ello raised his hands in capitulation and moved from Joe’s War Party into Furiosa’s own, and although he’s loud and brash, he’s been nothing but helpful. He’s young, but he’s become a solid leader among the contingent of former War Boys, and since Ace’s injury, he’s taken over more and more his duties. 

She should trust him, at least enough to know he’ll do his job. If she were still Joe’s Imperator and he’d been newly recruited to her crew, his performance would have been seen as exemplary; now, she can’t swallow back the black kernel of paranoia that’s taken root in her throat. When she was a vehicle, Ello would have been a useful component of a larger machine, and as a component, if he didn’t perform well, he would have been summarily discarded, and she wouldn’t have given him another moment of thought. Now, she’s a person, and so is he, and she has no idea how to assess his usefulness. 

In her side mirror, she sees the Gastown Boy lean closer to Ello to whisper some particularly unsavory complaint, and then from the passenger seat, Max’s hand clamps down hard on her human arm. “Don’t,” he hisses. “Let him. It’s, mmm.”

Her metal claw is hooked through the door handle. He gives it a significant look. 

He’s right. If the conversation is just the Gastown Boy and Ello, it’s two underlings commiserating. If she gets involved, she brings her rank and reputation with her, and it becomes much more of an interrogation. 

Max is much better spy. Furiosa swallows hard, suddenly very aware of his hand on her arm, and the fine, pale stubble that dusts his upper lip. Her mouth has gone bone-dry. He hasn’t had a crew, not the way she has; she’s had to be fierce and big, an opponent too dangerous to cross, but he’s survived by keeping his head down, by hitting hard and getting out of the way. 

He’s incredibly dangerous. She already knows this, but it’s hitting her again, a hard wave of want crashing into already keyed-up nerves, and fuck, she shouldn’t want to feel Max’s stubble burn against her skin. 

If he notices her sudden attack of gooseflesh, he says nothing. He checks the round in his shotgun, knuckles gone white against the dark metal. 

Ello’s smart enough to keep it light, letting the War Boy vent without seeming too interested. He claps the War Boy on the shoulder when they’re done loading - “See you around, mate.” - and rounds up the rest of the crew. “Back on the rig!” He catches Furiosa’s eye; she makes herself nod, and he jumps up on the tanker. She’s grinding her teeth, but the information will wait. 

The road back to the Citadel is clear, the skies wide and blue. There isn’t a breath of wind, nor any distant cloud of dust to announce impending ambush. It’s an easy run. 

Ello’s been Ace’s second for almost a hundred days now, and he’s smart. As soon as they’re back in the garage, Furiosa barely has the engine off before she’s dropping out of the cab, and Ello is right there beside her, falling in step as she heads toward the northmost tower, Max shuffling determinedly behind them. 

Capable meets them on the catwalk. “What is it? You came back so fast - did you see Buzzards?”

Furiosa shakes her head. “Get the Council. We’ve got news about the Blood.”


	110. Chapter 110

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitting some sections I can stitch together. Whew, we're cooking with grease now.

When everyone is all seated in Joe’s former War Room, Furiosa turns to Ello. “Tell them.”

Ello slouches back in his seat. On the surface, it’s a languid movement, one that could easily be confused for indolence; he’s nervous, and fronting hard trying to hide it. “Talked with a Gastown Boy - think his name is Knife. Recognized him from the War Party. He’s not hardcore, not like some. Not good enough to be a blackthumb, too mediocre to die historic.”

“We don’t do that anymore,” Capable interjects. “No one has to die-”

“We’re half-life!” he snaps back. “Got to die somehow. Rather do it all quick than...linger.”

Furiosa clears her throat, and the sound goes straight to Ello’s spine, yanking him upright. “Right,” he mutters. “So - Knife talks. He talks to everyone. Was chatty before, still chatty now.”

“How reliable is this chat?” Amy asks. 

Ello shrugs. “He en’t one to front - just got no carburetor. Guzzoline in, smoke out. All the same.”

“So his information is good.”

“Yeah, yeah. If he says something, it’s real, or else it was told to him as real.”

Jilly leans forward. “What did he say?”

“Said they’ve had Bullet Farmers come since the Farm blew. Said they came at night, cars barely limping. Said they’ve been holed up in Gastown trying to patch up, but their trade is running low, and they en’t exactly being grateful for the help.” He glances at Furiosa. “Said they’re spiky. Angry. Said they’re saying Gastown traitored the Blood when they accepted our water.” He drums his fingers on the table. “So I played it dumb, like I didn’t know anything, and asked about the Blood. Like I’d never heard of them.”

Capable is listening so intently she’s forgotten to take notes. Her hand stays poised just above the page. 

Ello takes a deep breath. “And Knife - Knife says Immortan’s blood is alive and well. Says that it’s a new body, but he’s still Immortan. That’s the Blood. Immortan’s blood.”

The room erupts. “That’s not _possible_ ” Toast snaps. “Furiosa fucking killed Joe. Nux killed Rictus. Corpus killed himself. There isn’t anyone else. 

“Scabrous.” The word claws itself out of Furiosa’s throat. A cold wash of adrenaline passes through her. It has to be Scabrous. He’d been killed in the desert, or at least that’s how his crew had reported it. He’d earned their loyalty through fear, and Furiosa knows intimately well how a beaten dog will bite. 

Max shakes his head. “Nope.”

Toast rolls her eyes. “What, are you suddenly the expert on Scabrous? Did you learn all about him when you fucked off and left?”

His nostrils flare. “He’s dead.”

“They never brought his body back,” Capable points out. She looks down at her hands. “That was before I… Dallie was there. She said Joe threw a fit. Killed one of the women. She’d just had a miscarriage, a boy, and Dallie said...”

“He’s _dead_ ,” Max insists, and there’s enough emphasis in his tone to make Furiosa pause. 

He’s looking at her, throat working desperately against words he can’t say. “Dead,” he repeats, and there’s something in the way that his fists clench against his thighs that reminds her of a lone figure stumbling out of the fog, covered in blood and dragging a bag of stolen ammunition. 

She hadn’t known then entirely what he was capable of. She’s not sure she knows even now, but there is no doubt in her mind that however it happened, Scabrous met his end at Max’s hand. That act alone makes Max one of the greatest threats in the Wasteland, and the realization brings the tingling back to her mouth, the irrational urge to take someone so dangerous and pull him hard against her body. 

Except he’s not looking at her like that. He just looks tired and more than a little bit lost. “Definitely dead,” he repeats dully, and that is all he can say. 

“So _who_?” Plenty demands. “The old bastard drowned our girls. If he’d had another living son, everyone in the entirely Wasteland would know it.”

“I tried,” Ello says. “I _tried_. Knife didn’t know.”

“Blood,” says Mari. “Could it be another relative? Brother, sister, parent? Doesn’t have to mean child.”

Toast shakes her head. “Miss Giddy said he’d lost everyone in the war. That was why he was so intent on having sons.”

“Anyone can call themselves Joe’s blood,” Amy points out. “It’s not like anyone can tell these days.”

Jilly massages her forehead. “So what do we do? We can’t sit here and wait for them to strike.”

“If the Bullet Farmers are in Gastown, they’ve left the Bullet Farm wide open.” Toast mouths her everpresent toothpick. “We could go now.”

Mari purses her lips. “It’s still a risk, with the lead.”

“Which risk is bigger?” Ello asks. “The risk of being poisoned, or the risk of being attacked?”

“We don’t have the munitions for a full-scale assault,” Capable says, flipping through her ledger and running a finger down the page. 

Toast nods. “We’ve got the weapons, and we’ve been rationing the ammunition we do have, but it’s not enough. If we run into any significant resistance, they’ll have the upper hand.”

“What about thundersticks? Explosives? Weapons that don’t require bullets?” Plenty asks, leaning forward. 

At the far end of the table, Keno crosses his arms. “We’re milling bolts from scrap metal. We definitely don’t have a shortage of those.” He glances to Furiosa. “In the right hands, they’re just as deadly, but you have to be much closer to get an accurate shot.” 

It’s a hard position to be in. The high slag walls of the lead mine form a defensive structure almost as impenetrable as the Citadel itself, and while his counterparts were busy making babies and lolling in oil-profit excess, the Bullet Farm’s overlord had focused all his energies on making his domain even more defensible. The few times she’d met him, Furiosa had found Kalashnikov to be fearsomely single-minded, and his lieutenants hand-picked to be the same. The man had taken the phrase _armed to the teeth_ to its literal end, and she bites back a shudder of revulsion.

She has no idea how Max managed to even get _close_ to the Bullet Farm, much less far enough in to cause an explosion. She seeks him out, but his eyes have gone blank and unreadable. 

Once, he looked at her like she was water, and he was dying of thirst. 

She’s selfish enough to want that back. 

“Our primary goal should be search and rescue,” Capable points out. “We should be concerned with weaponry only in terms of defense.”

“There aren’t going to be any civilians,” Furiosa says bluntly. 

“The miners-”

“-will be armed to the teeth.”

Capable sets her jaw. “They may not want to fight.”

“They’ll see us as attacking them. They live and die in that mine. We are not welcome.” 

“Then it’s up to us to help them learn-”

“They will _kill_ us,” Furiosa grinds out. “We hit them hard, and we hit them fast.” 

Bright spots of anger glow in Capable’s cheeks. “They are _people_ -”

“They’re not like Gastown,” Furiosa says. “They’re soldiers, every single one of them, and they will fight us to the last man. If there are Blood people in Gastown, that’s fewer of them in the Bullet Farm, and that means if we’re going to go, we have to go _now_.”

When?” Amy puts in bluntly. “How much time do we need to prepare?”

“Tomorrow,” Furiosa says, over Capable’s incensed protest. “As soon as we can.”

 

****

But the Wasteland has other plans. The storm comes up out of nothing; they always do, a mysterious alchemy of sun and sand and air that turns the desert from featureless wasteland into a hadean swirl. It’s late in the afternoon when one of the Pups on lookout notices the telltale orange haze low in the southern sky, and by nightfall, the tempest is upon them.


	111. Chapter 111

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super-keen on this every-two-weeks posting schedule I seem to have developed, but work has been crazy, and I am *THIS CLOSE* to finished the guest bathroom - we have water! and light! and a window! Now onto caulking and paint! But never fear, Fury Road is always lurking in the back of my brain, and we're close to getting into the good stuff. 
> 
> I love you all. Your comments and thoughts keep me chugging along. If you've sent me a question and I haven't responded - poke me again. I'm easily distracted, and don't mean to ignore you! Find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sacrificethemtothesquid) or bug me at sacrificethemtothesquid@gmail.com.

Sometimes, the dust storms blow in lazily, an orange haze descending over the Wasteland with the gauzy grace of fog. The sky stays red for days as the dust slowly falls, and the Garden Crews run double shifts sweeping off leaves and unclogging irrigation lines. It’s fine to be out on the terraces with just goggles and a bandana, and when she was newly ejected from the Vault, Furiosa remembers being conscripted to walk the lines of growing things, knocking away the dust with a gentle hand. It was the first time she’d been up on the terraces, and the enormity of the empty Wasteland had been overwhelming. 

This is not one of those storms. This is one of the monsters that turns the sky black at noon, a wall of sand and debris scouring the desert. Mari and Cheedo rush off to the Vault to push equipment against the walls and into corners; the pane of glass broken during Furiosa’s fight with Capto’s mole Lugnut hasn’t yet been replaced - glass is a rare and precious commodity - and Keno’s team is concerned the patch over the bullet hole won’t hold. Medical supplies are moved deeper into the tower, tucked away in windowless rooms with Pups and Milkers. Everyone is scrambling around, closing doors and windows where they can. 

Dag is waddling uncomfortably through the halls, one hand clutching her belly and the other grasping at anyone within reach. “Tell them to cover the seedlings,” she snaps at a passing War Boy, narrowly missing a handful of his dust scarf. “The seedlings - canvas or cloth or-”

“Got it, got it-”

“Do it _now_!”

“Got to take down the windmills-”

“ _Fuck_ the windmills, cover the _plants_ -”

In the end, there’s not enough time. There’s never enough time. When Joe was in charge, there had been a well-rehearsed storm plan, and for the most part everyone still knows their part, but there just isn’t enough time before the winds get too strong, and the sand is flaying the skin from their bodies. The stinging particles are propelled beneath cloth and leather, filtering under masks and clogging breathing screens. 

Furiosa is back inside, beating the dust from her trousers when she hears one of the younger War Boys murmur to another, “Vee eight, it’s just like the storm Boltcutter rode out on, innit?” 

They’re on the other side of the room. They don’t see her, not when the haze hangs thick in the air and everyone is bundled up in goggles and cloth. They were still Pups when she’d cranked her wheel to the east and let the wind lift her crew into the sky. It’s been one hundred and ninety six days, and her treason is already a fearsome legend. 

As serendipitous as the storm’s arrival was, the truth is that she hadn’t known about it until only a few hours before, when the spotters saw the clouds boiling up on the horizon and declared that its trajectory would probably miss the Citadel. She’d been standing in the shadows of the pump room, her gaze carefully neutral as Joe’s attendants prepared to powder his oozing sores. At his feet, a Pup cranked the handle of a music machine, the bright, unsteady sound of Before meted out like hoarded water. “Tell me, Furiosa,” Joe had said, “is there any danger to my produce?” 

The Wives were already hidden in the cargo hold, an action that could not be undone. She’d raised her chin, her tone bland. “Nothing of yours is ever in danger.”

He’d laughed, a dry wheeze that coiled around her bowels. “Excellent. Give the signal to lower my War Rig.”

She’d bowed to him for the last time, and not an hour later, she was in the belly of the hurricane, the girls huddled in the hold behind her. She could feel the lightning skittering across her skin, sharp, crawling pricks that preceded the blinding flash. Her prosthetic was jammed with dust and all but useless, and she’d gripped the wheel with both hands as the Rig shuddered and fought against the turbulent wind. 

She remembers thinking she couldn’t die, not at that moment, because if she did, Joe would just reclaim his Wives and her revenge would be incomplete. If he caught her, he would kill her, and she wouldn’t let the storm dispense his justice, not when he’d dispensed his justice using her own hands for so long.

Now, she’s coughing up brown sludge and clawing the grit from her eyes. “Here,” says Max, and even though between the dust and the darkness of the room she can’t quite see what he’s offering, the cool heft of a water bottle is suddenly in her human hand. 

Light flares in the small area, Capable’s dust-smeared face floating in the lantern’s orange glow. “Did everyone get in? Is everyone okay?”

Ello is leaning back against the door, dust filtering around the edges as the storm pounds against the metal. The wind howls through the gaps. “All here.” He roughly clears his throat and sends a wad of dark spittle to the floor. “Catwalks are loose, windmills might be fine. Didn’t have time to drop the blades, but the drivetrains are free.”

“The gardens?” 

One of Nakmin’s crew shakes his head. “Got ‘em covered, but that _wind_...”

“You did your best,” Capable says automatically, and raises the lantern. “There’s water and cloths further in. Come get clean.”

As the others drift away, shaking their arms and brushing at their faces, Furiosa lifts the bottle to her lips. The water is cool and fresh, and it chases the dryness from her mouth. There’s sand beneath the pads of her prosthetic and ground into the buckles, and when she finally lifts the prosthetic off, it comes away damp, the skin beneath made sticky and raw. She dribbles water from the bottle onto her stump, hissing at its burn. 

“Mm, better get that cleaned,” Max mumbles. He’s covered in orange, the pores of his face standing out like freckles. He’s half-curled in on himself, arms tucked into each other as he twitches in place, crackling with anxiety like a Geiger counter. She hands back the water bottle, and it takes him a moment to recognize the gesture. 

“You okay?” she asks quietly. Her voice is too loud in her own ears after the unmuffled roar of the storm.

He’s not okay. He hasn’t been okay since the moment in her room when the names of his beloved dead came bursting out of him like maggots, tearing through the flesh of their host. He’s been silent and twitchy, and she can see the ghosts that follow him, the way his eyes flicker and focus on places no person is standing. 

The lantern bobs back into the room. “Furiosa? Max? Is everything all right?” Capable raises an eyebrow. “The power’s out, so if you want to see where we’re going, I’ve got some light.”

Max is staring hard at something just beyond Capable’s left shoulder. Furiosa feels sick down to her bones. “Yeah, we’re fine,” she makes herself say. “We’re coming.”


	112. Chapter 112

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the first sunny day in ages, and instead of doing something helpful like...cleaning...I'm sitting on the porch assembling another chapter. Bonus!

The larger rooms all have ventilation holes, and despite the Repair Boys’ best efforts at blocking tunnels and closing doorways, there is still a curtain of dust hanging in the air. The safest rooms are in the dormitory blocks, below the kitchens; the interior rooms don’t have windows, and people cluster together in social groups, Pups tucked against Milkers and older Boys. A handful of gardeners are singing, a strange, lilting tune in what sounds like the Buzzard’s language. The echo of their voices is blunted by the dust and the rock. 

At first Furiosa thinks Max stumbles, but he’s just leaning closer to Capable, his voice barely audible. “Anyone know if this storm is hot?”

Capable nods. “Mari found a brand-new Geiger in one of those old salvage boxes from the Bone Room. She’s got it now.”

Furiosa says nothing. There’s no point in knowing, really, not when they’re already bunkered down under thick, deep stone. Everything about the Wasteland is killing, from the too-bright sun to the biting cold of the night. She can taste if water is sweet or bitter, and she can shoot a raider from a thousand paces. Beyond that, there aren’t any other precautions she can take. 

“A warning,” Capable whispers as they pause at the doorway. “Dag’s extremely upset about the plants. Cheedo’s calmed her down, but...be gentle.”

Max nods. 

There are blankets and cushions scavenged from other rooms and spread on the sleeping ledges; the sour tang of must rises from the fabric when Furiosa sits down. Max eases in beside her, and immediately starts unstrapping the brace on his leg, pressing a thumb hard into his knee. 

Capable sets the lantern down in the middle of the room, the flickering light throwing deep shadows on everyone assembled. “I left my ledger upstairs,” she sighs. “I was in the middle of salvage counts.”

“Even the desert is telling you to take a break,” Cheedo teases. She’s curled up against Dag, running her fingers through the other girl’s hair.

Dag stares at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes, hugging her belly. “His breath is dead but he’s still breathing, killing us with the arms he doesn’t have-”

Cheedo presses her lips against Dag’s forehead. “Remember what Furiosa said? We keep moving.”

Dag grumbles, but doesn’t protest. 

“How long will the storm last, do you think?” Amy asks. 

Toast shrugs. “Sometimes a few hours, sometimes a week.” She’s stretched out on the stone ledge, apparently using the downtime to catch a nap. 

Cheedo glances at Amy. “Didn’t you get them in the Green Place? I thought everywhere had sandstorms.”

Mari shakes her head. “The mountains protected us at first. It wasn’t until the water went sour that the soil started to blow away.”

“The soil was already blowing away,” Amy points out. “Water was going long before it got sour.”

“Remember what Ruha said-”

“She always said. No way to know. Not then, not now.”

Cheedo traces a finger across Dag’s hairline. “Was Ruha the one who said you had to leave?”

There’s a moment of silence, with just the muffled howling of the wind outside as it echoes down the stone hallways. Amy and Mari exchange a significant look. “It’s...complicated,” Mari finally says. 

Amy snorts. “Seemed simple enough.”

“Unkind words were said on both sides,” allows Mari. 

Furiosa thinks of Valkyrie, standing tall and lean and beautiful, a cape of crow feathers about her shoulders. Valkyrie, who shed the cape to ascend the honey pot, her black hair boiling around her as she climbed. 

_We’re the only ones left_.

Val, a pile of bleached bones half-buried in the dust. 

“You said there were no others,” Toast says. “But when we went through the bog, there were people on stilts.”

“Crow Fishers,” Mari says quietly. “I didn’t expect there were any still alive.” 

Toast shifts on the ledge. “Crows aren’t poison.”

“It’s not the birds themselves. It’s the water. Whatever they eat, you eat, and it rots you from the inside out.” She shakes her head. “We kept looking for a new place... We were scouts, before, and we were used to travelling for days or weeks at a time, but there was nothing. Nothing. We kept coming back empty-handed, and there was...conflict. Frustration. People were scared.”

Amy’s lip curls. “Willful ignorance, more like.”

Furiosa is suddenly fourteen, long-legged and tan. She and Valkyrie are sitting in the circle of mothers, thrilled to be included but also a little heady with the newfound responsibility. They are surrounded by serious faces, by eyes and mouths pinched with grief. “Hairpin.” The words come tumbling out of her mouth. “Hairpin was getting sick. They- the babies..”

“You remember.” Mari is looking at her with wonder. “I forgot you were there. You and Val both.”

“Hairpin?” Cheedo prompts. 

“Another clan.”

Toast rolls to her stomach, propping her head up on her hands. “How many clans were there? Or were you all Swaddle Dog, like Furiosa?”

There is a clot of dust in Furiosa’s throat, cloying and metallic, and she can’t swallow it away. 

“There were five clans.” Mari leans back against the ledge, her eyes focused on something in the distant past. “Named for ordinary things. We had these big canvas banners with pictures painted on them. It was really just a way to keep the anklebiters together, to keep them from wandering off into the desert. There were so many orphans - we had to forge new families somehow.”

“Swaddle Dog was this mutt that found us, back when the world first starting going to hell.” Amy snorts. “Skinny little thing, constantly shivered. Ellie made her a sweater. Clothes! On an animal! But she was happiest wrapped up like a baby. Swaddled. So we called her Swaddle Dog.”

“Hairpin, Swaddle Dog...what were the others?” Cheedo asks.

“Hairpin, Swaddle Dog, Teacup, Juniper and Chook. You stayed with your clan until you became someone’s initiate.”

Max nudges Furiosa’s leg, and despite herself, she jolts. “Better get that clean,” he mutters, handing her a damp cloth, clarifying, “Your arm.”

With numb fingers, she takes the cloth and presses it against the raw skin of her stump. Cheedo is still asking questions, Mari patiently answering them, but Furiosa can’t make herself listen. Whatever happened to the Green Place, the last of the Vuvalini are sitting here in this room, and there is still a hot, aching place in her chest where she’d carried the memory of Valkyrie and the mothers. The sharp burn of water is demanding, and drags her back to the dark room, to the damp, dusty air and the heat of the bodies within. The past is gone, like an exhaled breath. 

She has to keep moving. They all do. 

Max settles back beside her, motionless but somehow not relaxed. He’s laid beside her at night, but she knows that lately he’s not sleeping; she can feel the tension in his breath, and he’s too still. He doesn’t nuzzle against her the way he once did, and her body is screaming with a violent need. 

He’s grieving. She recognizes that. She hates it and hates herself for her own lack of compassion, and she presses the cloth hard against her raw skin, eyes falling closed as everything hazes to red. 

Once, he’d handed her his gun. She wonders if she should do the same. Would she even recognize the appropriate moment? Furiosa the Imperator would look him in the eye and tell him to get moving, but Furiosa the person? She can think of nothing. 

_I miss you_ , she thinks, and the thought feels traitorous. It’s isn’t fair. It isn’t fair of him to leave and leave her wanting, and then to come back and fan the flames, only to disappear into his head. 

“Tell me about the Green Place,” Cheedo is saying, small brown fingers carding through the white silk of Dag’s hair. “Furiosa told us a little bit, but...I want to hear more.”

Furiosa can feel the weight of Mari’s gaze. She knows the girls have talked. She doesn’t remember what she’d said before; the words had spilled forth in a confusing flood, stiff and hoarse from thousands of days of silence. She’d been torn between a fierce desire to say whatever it took to get the Wives on her side, to convince them to allow themselves to be stolen, and a keen desire to please Angharad that was as painful as it was bewildering. Every dismissive glance, every snort of disgust - it clawed at her in a way nothing ever had. Angharad was a queen, and her disapproval was like a pheromone, unavoidable and all-consuming. Her favor was more convincing than any violence Furiosa had ever been dealt. 

So Furiosa had told them about the Green Place. The descriptions of the shallow pools and the deeper lake, the places where the hardy scrub turned into softer plants - Angharad’s eyes had lit up like suns, and for the first time in seven thousand days, Furiosa had felt something other than anger: the first blooming kernel of hope. 

Hope is a mistake. Angharad is dead. The Green Place is dead. Max is locked inside himself, and there is a storm howling outside. Furiosa’s arm hurts, and she’s so very, very tired. 

“There were once many green places,” Mari says. “What would you like to know?”


	113. Chapter 113

Ello’s team finishes closing doors and blocking windows, and straggles in, exhausted and covered in grime. Dag growls a little at their arrival, muttering about murderers and men without skin, and the Boys cluster near the door to blink the sand from their eyes.

Max takes the radiation detector from Mari and disappears for an interminable period of time. He comes back with a terse report - “Best we stay in here” - and refuses to elaborate. Furiosa can’t miss the way he handles the device with a confident familiarity, and it’s yet another example of his strangeness; it’s a rare enough tool, made even rarer by its intact power pack. The radiation detector is a priceless artifact from an earlier time, and Max accepts it from Mari with no hesitation, and doesn’t flinch when it crackles to life. 

So many of the things made Before haven’t survived the thousands of days, either eaten by the harsh sun or destroyed by human folly; Furiosa supposes that Max is like that himself, a relic of a softer time pummeled and pitted by the passage of time. She wonders what that makes her. 

She doesn’t think she’s a soft place for him to land. 

Hours pass. Cheedo keeps up an effervescent litany of questions and observations, Mari responding with a preternatural patience. Furiosa drowses, her head tucked on Max’s shoulder. Her chest feels empty as a cistern, the raw skin on her stub a constant, throbbing heat. 

The storm rages, and it sounds as if the entire world is just a speck of sand caught in a giant engine run past its redline. The wind howls through the cracks and crevices in the rocks, amplified by the halls until the entire tower is vibrating with the sound. 

“Corpus said once those are the War Boys who die soft,” one of the younger War Boys whispers, his eyes white and terrified in the trembling lamplight. “That they cry because they can’t get to Valhalla.”

“That’s nonsense,” Toast says curtly. She’s moved to the floor, claiming one of Cheedo’s legs as a backrest. “It’s just the wind.”

“You don’t _know_ ,” Ello snaps back. “Sure, it’s the wind, but what’s _in_ the wind, yeah? Just because Immortan hurt you don’t mean you got to tell us we’re wrong.”

Capable tries to intercede. “He hurt all of us-”

Ello emphatically shakes his head. “Not me. I’m here, en’t I? I got food and fuel.” He spits on the ground, one hand protectively cupping the shaved head of the youngest War Boy. “Come on, Nif. They can keep their pain, we’ll take our dead.” 

“Fucking schlanger!” Toast shakes water off one hand as the War Boys storm off. “He knocked my tea over.” 

“This is yours,” Amy says, reaching around to grab the cup. 

“Then what-?”

Dag makes a noise in the back of her throat. Capable raises the lantern. “Dag, are you all right?”

The other woman is gritting her teeth. “Stay. Needs to...stay-”

“Let ‘em go,” Toast sniffs. “‘M not in the mood for them anyway.”

“That’s not tea,” say Mari abruptly. “Cheedo. The supplies. Now.”

Realization dawns on the girl’s face. “Dag!” Cheedo bolts to her feet. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

The other woman swallows hard, and her voice breaks on the words. “It’s not...it’s not _happening_ -”

Furiosa is suddenly wide awake and unable to move. Max has gone utterly still beside her, and she can feel the sudden uptick in his breathing. 

“Babies come into this world on their own time, girl,” Mari says, using Capable’s shoulder to leverage herself upright, “and this one says its time is now.” She snaps her fingers at Cheedo. “Clean towels. Get the rocket stove. We’ll need lots of water and a pot to boil it in. Get help to carry it. Remember our plan?” 

She nods and takes off running, Capable hard on her heels. 

“ _No_!” Dag slaps the stone. “I _can’t_ -”

“You can,” Mari says firmly. “You’re strong, and it’s early yet. It’ll be small.”

“I should…” Furiosa licks dry lips. “We should-” Her heart is pounding in her skull, the sticky-sweet tang of birth water filling her mouth and nose. For one breathless second, she’s choking, bile rising hot and hard in her throat. 

Her ears are roaring as if the entire hurricane is suddenly in her head. Joe is dead, but she can almost hear his footsteps. He’s going to know. He’s going to take the baby and toss it in the wading pool, where it will sink to the bottom. She can see it, still mottled and wrinkled, mouth open in a silent, confused cry. It doesn’t kick. It doesn’t know how. It’s barely had three breaths of air, and there are arms around her, pinning her in place-

Distantly, she hears Amy’s tense, “ _Grab her_ -” and then the arms are Max’s, holding her upright until the blackness dissolves from the edges of her vision. 

Mari is bent over Dag, one hand on the girl’s swollen belly and the other on her shoulder. “Pet, I need you to talk with me. When did the contractions start?”

Dag shakes her head vehemently. “It’s not…. _real_ -”

“Maybe it’s not your time,” Mari allows, “but to make sure, I need to know when the contractions started.”

“We weren’t squeezed out, we were _ripped_ out-”

“You helping or you gonna leave?” Amy says bluntly, raising one eyebrow at Max and Furiosa. 

Max makes a small noise of alarm. 

“Plenty,” Mari interjects. “Furiosa, can you walk? Go tell Plenty we may need her.” Her tone is one of an Initiate Mother, calm and in total control. Dag makes a low, broken moan of protest, but Mari just squeezes her shoulder. 

Her legs quiver with each step, but she knows how to take orders, and somehow, she finds Plenty in another room, braiding a Milk Mother’s hair as a Pup slumbers in her lap. “Mari thinks it might be Dag’s time.” At least her voice is strong. 

Plenty immediately hands off the braiding to one of her sisters, and eases the Pup off her lap. “Almond, can you take Sprint here? That’s a girl.” Heaving herself to her feet, she dusts off her thighs. “It’s early for Dag, yeah? Thought we’d have another ten days, at least.”

“A new little one,” sighs one of the Mothers. “So exciting. Plenty, call us if you need.”

“We certainly have milk to spare,” titters another. “Skinny little thing like her, wouldn’t surprise me if she’s late drawing down.”

“Maybe it’ll be a mutant like its father.”

“Hush! It wasn’t her fault he’s the dad.”

“Still could drown it.”

“Enough,” Plenty scolds. “Babies can’t help who their parents are. There isn’t a one of us in here who’s clean of old Joe, least of all _you_ , Thimble. Now,” she turns to Furiosa, “let’s not tarry, mm?”

In the scant few minutes since she’s left, Dag has descended into a raging fury, and her almost feral shrieks echo down the hall with an intensity that rivals the storm outside. “It’s not time. It’s not _time_ -”

Capable is attempting to pacify her, not even flinching as her sister’s fingers dig into the tender flesh of her arm. “It could be a girl. Remember what Keeper said. It could be a girl.”

“Oi, one of these. Take it from me, girl, shouting’s just going to make it harder.” Plenty immediately settles herself in next to Dag, taking the younger woman’s hand. “Gonna meet a little one today, eh?”

“It’s… _not_ time-”

“Not for a while yet,” Mari agrees, “but soon.” 

Dag pushes up from the ledge in fury, and the rage in her face is so much like the night she protected Cheedo from Joe-

_He won’t kill her. He won’t._ Joe is dead, but women die in childbirth every day-

The baby floating in the pool while the blood still pours from Cunt’s torn eponym. Joe, turning away in disgust, saying to the Organic Mechanic, “It’s her third. Your work is done.”

Furiosa was born in blood and baptised with amputation, but there is something about the warmth of the room and the low voices of the mothers that slices through to the tiny, frightened parts of her. She has lead war party, driven the Rig through a mighty storm, and stood unyielding before a vengeful army, but here, she is trapped, the walls looming too close and the air gone thin. 

Max is suddenly beside her, a steady, solid weight at her shoulder. Her lungs suddenly find purchase, heaving like bellows in a forge. 

“Here,” Max says, holding something out to Mari. In his hand is the length of plastic cannula he keeps on the collar of his jacket. “Might need it. Figured I could, mm, stick around.”

Mari studies him for a hard moment. “Bless you, boy,” she finally says. “Here’s hoping we don’t have a need, but get some water in you, just in case.”

He nods jerkily, and then, at a loss for anything better to do, perches gingerly on the edge of the sleeping ledge. That settles it; she’s not going to leave if he’s choosing to stay. 

Furiosa clenches her fists, and stays.


	114. Chapter 114

Cheedo talks with Dag for a long time, their foreheads pressed together. They are both crying, the rough shaking of two people trying desperately to pretend they’re all right. “‘Wring your hands and tear your hair’,” Furiosa hears Cheedo whisper. “‘But you’re not going back.’ You told me that. We made it then, and we can make it now.”

“I’m scared. Cheedo, I’m so scared-”

“You’re not alone,” the girl says fiercely. “You’ve got all of us watching over you.”

It’s not enough. It’s never enough, not when there’s a baby inside of you trying to get out, and your body becomes a mechanical thing made of shit and blood and clenching muscle. Furiosa doesn’t know, but somehow, she _knows_. It’s a journey every mother has to make on their own. At least, that’s what Belly had said, trying to soothe Joe’s newest conquest when the original Mechanic had sliced Ara open like a beast. 

The baby they killed Ara to save had too many arms and too many legs, like two clay figures rolled together while still damp, and barely enough skull to hold its eyes. The Mechanic didn’t even bother to consult with Joe before drowning it in the pool.

Ara was older. Dag is young. Dag’s had Mari and Cheedo to look over her, and even though Furiosa doesn’t believe in magic, maybe there’s some private, protective knowledge that Mari has that the Mechanic didn’t, some special skill to make babies come out alive and whole.

_We keep moving_.

She feels strangely blank, like a desert plateau windswept down to bare stone.

Dag breathes, a quiet _huff-huff-huff_ that gains intensity with each contraction. “Easy,” Mari croons, “that’s a girl. You’re doing fine, pet. You’re doing just fine.”

In a lull between contractions, Max suddenly leans forward, and says abruptly, “I was out on a call.” Even though the words don’t make sense, the way he says them gives them an almost mystical weight. Being On A Call means something to him in the way that so many other things do. It’s another anachronism from a man who seems to be out of sync with time itself. “I wasn’t even there.”

Everyone is listening. Furiosa leans forward, waiting silently for him to continue. The hallway moans, the air made thin and sibilant. 

“I walked in and...it had already happened. She was there-” he takes a breath, “ _holding him_...” In his lap, his hands twitch toward his elbows, as if he’s cradling his child. 

“Sprog,” she supplies.

He nods, his throat bobbing as he swallows. “Sprog.”

The girls are looking at them with wide eyes. “You had a son,” Capable breathes. There’s a long moment, when the question hangs heavy in the air before she musters up the courage to ask it. 

Only Capable. Only Capable, with her wide, earnest face. Her little white teeth catch at her lip, because she _knows_ the insurmountable pain of that loss. She ignores Toast’s hiss of warning. “Max. Is he-?”

“Dead.” The word drops to the ground like a shorn lizard tail, bloody and final. 

“Can you tell us what happened?” Toast asks quietly. “I mean. If you want.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

For a long time, no one says anything. 

If it were anyone else - even Furiosa couldn’t have asked that question-

She pulls the blanket more tightly around her shoulders, as if the fabric can somehow hide the sour jealousy that rises in her throat. In another lifetime, she might have borne a child, or pulled one from the ravenous claws of the desert. A foundling, to be taken into the circle of mothers and named beneath the snap of a canvas banner in the wind. It was how Valkyrie had come to them, how she and Valkyrie planned to become mothers themselves. 

She will never carry a child within her body. If Mari is right, that part of her was tainted before she ever left the Green Place. But even if it were possible - if she could somehow conceive and carry the baby to term - she is far too scarred. Her notions of motherhood have been poisoned by Joe’s abuse just as surely as the Green Place was tainted by the creeping sourness. 

Max has been a father. Max has known that peace. Max has-

She can’t think like that. She can’t think at all. She folds herself into the blanket, counting the hard cadence of Dag’s breath. 

****

Max thinks of the ocean. 

Jessie had loved the shore. He’d been a town boy himself, the son of a man with shiny shoes, a man who hadn’t spent time with water and sand and dust. Jessie had bare feet and thick calluses, and when he kissed her in the dunes she rose up to meet his mouth like the swelling tide.

They’d bought the old beach house for a song, and spent that first summer shoving rags in the cracks to keep out the flies. Beyond the dunes, the ocean was cool and welcoming, closing in over their bodies to wash away the sweat and grime. 

He left the ocean behind when he left the beach house, when he’d left the still-warm bodies of his wife and son. He’d turned and driven to the continent’s interior, urged on by vengeance and the blinding phosphor of grief. 

In the Citadel, leaning against the damp walls, he is closer to water than he has ever been. He has been thirsty for uncountable days, and now, the storm howls through the tunnels and pounds in his skull like breakers. He’s watched the land go slowly cool and dry, and he’s been far enough to the north that he’s seen the hulking wrecks that float on the mirages.

He’d given up on the ocean. Lost in the thick cloud of madness, it was easy to believe that the memory of so much water was only ever a fever dream. 

Something metallic and cool is placed in his hand; it’s a canteen being passed around, and Furiosa is looking at him with eyes that are as green as the razor-edged grass that grew in the dunes. 

Furiosa smells like salt and ash. Her hair is no longer the severe buzz it once was; it’s getting longer, a wild mop of dusty curls and for a moment, the world blurs, and Jessie is in his nose and his eyes-

“Fool,” she mutters, but there’s no venom in it, only a weary affection that floods his chest with a warmth he doesn’t deserve. 

There were once anchors, used to keep boats from floating away. He’s been floating for so long...

Cheedo sings, and Mari soothes, and Dag cries like the waves, each contraction slowly building to a frothy crest.

****

The apex of the storm has passed when the child is born. With one final bellow, Dag pushes her perfect daughter into Mari’s waiting hands.


	115. Chapter 115

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, this got long. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me this long. I can't believe it's almost been a year. I'm hoping to wrap the story up in the next twenty chapters or so (the author says hopefully, knowing full well that she's not driving this rig at all) and will push to get it done by the one-year anniversary. 
> 
> I love you all. I know a couple of you asked questions, and I _think_ I answered them, but if I didn't, please don't be offended. I'm a terrible scatterbrain, and probably just forgot, so PLEASE bug me and remind me. You're not a bother at all. You're the reason I write! Hit me up at sacrificethemtothesquid@gmail.com, or on [tumblr](http://sacrificethemtothesquid.tumblr.com/)

Furiosa doesn’t realize she’s dozing until Max twitches them both awake, wild hair and wild eyes. The winds have died, leaving a vacuum of silence in their wake; the harsh exhalation of his panic is sharp in her ears. Without a word, he heaves himself off the ledge, and staggers into the darkness of the hallway. 

Wiping sleep from her face, Furiosa looks around. It’s almost pitch black, a fading cranklight casting a shallow glow in the center of the floor. In the tiny room, only Plenty raises her head. She has Dag’s new daughter tucked to her breast, the infant sleepily nuzzling against the plum-dark nipple. Everyone else is asleep, Dag curled in the protective nest of her sisters. 

“Forgot what it felt like,” the milk mother breathes, one hand cupping the baby’s head. “Actual mouth, all gentle and tiny...It’s a blessing, this one not having to fear the pool.” Her eyes come up to pinion Furiosa, glistening like wet stone. “Don’t know if I’ve properly said thank you for that.”

She suddenly can’t breathe, her throat gone thick and sour. Even just looking at the baby reminds her of bubbles and lifeless little bodies, and the room is too dark and too small. Killing Joe was selfish. She didn’t do it for the babies in the pool; she did it for herself. 

It’s too much for others to think she was being altruistic. Not when she sacrificed her crew to the storm, not when she’s got the blood of seven thousand days of obedient murder ground into her skin. She makes some noncommittal noise and escapes into the safety of the empty hall. 

After the shriek of the storm, the stone seems heavy and ponderous. Even just breathing seems overly-loud, the hollow thud of her own pulse steady in her chest

“Boss?” The sound startles her - it’s Ace, cuddling a small guzzoline lamp, the orange light flickering unsteadily across his face. There’s dust hanging in the air and settled on the floor; it’s muffled his footsteps, and she can taste it in her mouth. 

There’s something hollow about the moment, and she feels like one of Angharad’s books, an entire story thinly sliced into pieces. She is a barren Wife, startled during an escape attempt. She is an Imperator, waiting for a report. She is a terrified initiate, waiting for a rescue that never comes. There is a pool filled with water and babies, one future drowned by another. 

“Boss?” One of his pale eyebrows edges upward. 

“Dag’s child is a girl.” The words tumble out of her mouth before she can swallow them back. “If anyone does anything - _anything_ \- to either of them, they answer to me.” Her voice is shaking, and she closes her teeth with a snap. She can’t close her eyes without seeing gray corpses, and the urge to lash out boils under her skin. 

Ace is not Joe. Ace, who lets the smallest Pups sleep in his arms. Ace, who gave a rejected Wife a chance when others might have tossed her aside. 

Furiosa owes him better than this. She owes him more than what she is. 

Ace is looking at her hard. “Time’s past for that,” he finally says. “But I’ll pass the word along.”

She makes herself nod. “The storm?”

“Over. Visibility’s low out there, but it’s not quite full daylight.” He shrugs. “Know more later.”

“Get the crews ready to assess the damage.” She doesn’t know what they’ll find. She almost hopes the Buzzards are lurking in the dunes; she’d welcome any excuse to shake off this shaky energy that’s bubbling inside her like poison water. She needs the solid weight of the shifter in her hand and the steady roar of the engine slowly burning into her bones. “Let me know as soon as we can go out.”

He nods. “Got it, Boss. Need the light?”

She doesn’t, and he shuffles off in the opposite direction. She’s walked these halls in pitch black for thousands of days, hidden from unwelcome eyes, navigating only by the curve of the floor and the subtle drip of water, and she knows the way to her room. There are two places Max would hide, and the catwalks to the garage tower have been pulled back to save the precious metal from being dashed against the stone. 

There’s just enough ruddy light coming from the window that she can see him sitting at her little desk. Dust has blown in, settling on every surface and collecting in drifts in the corners and on the bed. He’s wiped some of it off the desk, leaving a hand-shaped smear, the metal showing up like exposed bone beneath the sand. 

She leans against the door, feeling the latch click in place. “Hey.”

He has her banksia in his hand. Callused fingers stroke the dust from the tiny little mouths. “Storm’s gone,” he mumbles, but all she can see is the way he gently touches the seedpod. 

He’s been a father. He had a family and lost them, and she had a family and was taken from them. 

She remembers walking into Val’s open arms, of shaking so hard from exhaustion and adrenaline that all she could do was clutch Val against her and try to believe that after seven thousand days, _seven thousand days_ , each one its own gaping wound-

Val is dead. Val followed her into the Salt, and followed her back out, and then they ran her down-

The Citadel is steeped in blood. Blood runs down its walls and in Furiosa’s veins, and it’s _Max’s_ blood. The Citadel has water, but only the way a venomous lizard has a bright hide; beneath the glistening surface is rot and corruption, and Max is good in a way most people never are, and all at once, she knows what she has to do. 

This is going to kill her, but she has no choice. Valkyrie died for her, Katie died for her, and her mother and so many others. She will not let Max join their ranks. She can’t. She isn’t worth it.

Taking two long strides, Furiosa takes the banksia from his hand. He looks up at her, blinking in confusion when she holds it back out. 

“I can’t accept this.” Her throat is tight, but thank the mothers, her hand is steady, the seedpod balanced on her open palm. 

He stares at the offering, and then shakes his head, the movement stuttery. “N-no. ‘S yours-”

“There are things I can’t give you,” she says calmly. “Things I can’t be.” This is what it feels like to die, she thinks to herself, the lassitude of certainty bleeding into her limbs. It’s fitting, maybe, that the last time she felt like this was when he was cradling her head in the back of the Gigahorse, Joe’s blood still damp on her skin. “I don’t want to hold you somewhere you don’t want to stay.”

His eyes flash like silver coins in the darkness. “Furi-”

“I- I care about you.” The words come out in a rush, and she fangs it. “But I won’t hold you. Not here. Not with me.” Her own words come echoing back - _the one thing I wanted for myself_ \- and her fingers clench around the banksia, its little mouths biting into her skin. “You aren’t a thing, and I-I’m not either.”

He stares at her, his expression pinched and unreadable. She thinks she might see sorrow in the hard crumple of his brow, confusion in the set of his mouth. 

“I can’t replace the ones you lost,” she says, and swallows against the dry sand in her throat, suddenly unable to look at him. “I...I want to,” Furiosa admits, and grits her teeth, steeling herself at the admission - she’s unworthy, so unworthy, and if he’s still here, he needs to know the full measure of who she is, every major crime and petty jealousy. “But that’s not possible, and it’s not right.”

“Not the only one who’s lost people,” Max mumbles, and she can feel his eyes on the side of her face. 

“You know me,” she says. “You know what I am.” _You know what I’ve done, what I’m capable of doing_ echoes in the air, unsaid. He knows the Wasteland and its mercurial politics; he knows exactly what a liability it is to be allied with her. If he leaves now, he can at least claim ignorance. If he chooses to stay by her side, he will inevitably become infamous by association. She is not a warlord - she isn’t Joe - but she isn’t a hero, either. 

He regards her from beneath lowered eyelids, chewing absently on the corner of his cheek. 

“Furiosa,” he says, tired, a little sad, and gently closing her fingers around banksia, he stands up and turns away. 

She’s so sure this is the end. Her heart is vibrating in her chest, rocketing past its redline. She holds her breath and waits. 

Except he’s not turning away to leave. He’s turning around, his back to her, and with a deep breath, he slowly pulls his shirt over his head. 

“ _Oh._ ”

The sound comes out in a slow breath. In the hundred and ninety-six days since she first saw him strapped to the front of Nux’s car, she’s never seen Max shirtless. There have been moments it’s been close, injuries that necessitated treatment, but it’s not been this way, not voluntarily. She thinks of Miss Giddy telling the girls about satellites and distant planets, of two objects circling each other so closely but somehow never colliding. 

The gravity of him is crushing. 

She knows he was a blood bag, but she’s never seen his souvenirs of that time; now she does, and she numbly clutches at her scarred stub in sympathy. 

Furiosa was taught how to read, but it’s not a skill that’s ever come easily, nor been used often. She knows the shape of the letters, and recognizes the deep, slicing script of the Organic Mechanic. The notes are upside down, meant to be legible as Max hung from the ceiling. Still, some of the words jump out at her:

_HI-OCTANE_

_UNIVERSAL DONOR_

_PSYCHOTIC_

And near the nape of his neck, in almost playful letters beneath the Immortan’s brand: _Keep muzzled…_

The noise she makes is strangled with pain. 

She sets the banksia shakily back on the table, and puts out her hand. She hesitates before touching him, feeling the heat of him, the shuddering hitch in his breath as he holds back the panic. “May I?” The request is whispered, as if anything louder will send him running. 

Max nods jerkily. 

Even having given permission, he still twitches hard as her human fingertips ghost from PSYCHOTIC to V8, and drift down to HI-OCTANE. Organic’s black words are blurred in places, like he’d tried to scratch them out himself but couldn’t get the ink under his fingernails. There’s a scar near his left shoulder, where Atrox had shot him, and several long keloids near his right hip. 

“Do you know what it says?” she asks hoarsely.

He shakes his head, vehement, his hands on the wall clenching into fists. “Don’t want to know,” he rasps. 

Her chest is too full. Her whole body is screaming, but she can’t move, held in place by the heat of his skin. “Why are you showing me this?” She licks dry lips. “Why now?”

There’s a long pause. “Not...the person I was,” he finally allows. “Before this-” he waves a hand over his shoulder, at the Organic’s tattoo, “maybe I wasn’t changed much from when I was-” he chokes on the words, but she hears them anyway: _a father. A lover._. Whatever he was before. “But…” He audibly swallows. “Got caught. Got stuck. Couldn’t run.” He turns, moving just out of reach but still wringing his shirt in his hands. “Lost my car.” His eyes flick to the banksia on the desk. “Got burned.”

She’d almost shot him. She _had_ shot him; she just hadn’t had the luck to kill him. She hadn’t known who he was, who he would be and what he would mean, and the weight of everything she hadn’t known, the _consequence_ of it all, the potential and the actual, and it presses down in her lungs like water. 

She hadn’t known him then, but she’d brought in blood bags just like him. She’s complicit in his abuse - she’s complicit in her own - and now he’s standing here, breathing like he’s running for his life but standing his ground, his chest bare. The sight of him makes her suddenly hyper-aware of the dryness of her tongue, of the way his lungs expand inside his ribs and his pulse throbs at his neck. 

She would very much like to put her mouth on the place where his shoulder meets his neck, and hum against his skin until the desperate pounding of his heart subsides, and then keep humming until it quickens in an entirely different way. 

But that would mean holding him down, holding him here, and _oh_ , the wanting and the not-wanting are two pistons in the same engine, blazing fire as they churn. 

“Been marked by this place,” he mutters. “Can’t seem to leave. Other places, other times...got away, but this...”

“You’re such a _fool_ ,” Furiosa croaks out, unaccountably angry that he’s gotten the chance to leave again and again and he’s still fucking _here_ \- and just as she’s trying to shove him at the door, he’s touching her, his hands cradling her face and forehead pressed against hers. She can feel the warmth of his body, can smell the sharp musk of his skin. “You can always leave, you need to get out-”

Her hands have nowhere to go, fluttering anxiously between them, and then for lack of anything better, she’s touching him, her human hand fisted against his bare shoulder. He’s...not soft - not really; he’s much too compactly muscled for that - but he’s so _warm_ , and against her better judgement, she splays her fingers out against his clavicle. 

He’s not soft, and neither is she. 

His heart is pounding beneath her hand. He’s still running high - she can feel him trembling - but he’s looking at her like he’s facing down an army. He’s hurting, but there’s resolute concern in his face and his hands, and she can’t _stand_ that, can’t stand the way he _looks_ at her like she’s something fragile, something precious and soft, something that’s _deserving_ of this unasked-for gentleness. 

Furiosa pushes away, snatching the banksia from the table and brandishing it at him. “Take it,” she snaps. “Just- it’s yours. You don’t - you owe me nothing.” She’d been prepared to give it up - to give _him_ up - and absolve him of any debt real or imagined; anything to give him back his freedom She hadn’t for one second anticipated him pushing back, and now that he is, her calm is gone, shattered like glass on the floor. 

“Not about owing,” he rasps. “You and me. ‘S’never been about that.”

She knows that. She _knows_ that, knows it deep in her bones like the way she somehow knows to suck the oxygen into her lungs and squeeze it back out again. People like them, in a world like this - the tally cannot be counted. It doesn’t work that way. Their survival is bound up in each other, like a piston and its twin working to push an engine forward. They are stronger together than they are apart, and the banksia is heavy in her human hand. 

_Got to, mm, get broken…_

Max is never going to outrun his ghosts. Neither is Furiosa. They will carry their dead with them until their own bones are left in the sun to bleach, and even then, they may not find any peace. The things they’ve done will always live beneath their skin, invisible tattoos written in stolen blood. Furiosa will always be carrying the weight of her sins, and Max will always be shadowed by his murdered family. She will never feel his touch without also somehow feeling Joe. He will never look at Dag's daughter and not see the specter of his dead son. 

_Got to burn before things open_.

They will never not be who they are. She’d thought she’d be free when she turned the wheel, but it’s been one hundred and ninety-six days, and she’s starting to understand that she will never be free. She will never shake the last seven thousand days any more than she can shake the freckles from her skin or the green from her eyes. She will never be absolved of the things she’s done, and even if she could, she wouldn’t deserve that kind of peace. 

She will never be free of the past, but _we keep moving_.


	116. Chapter 116

Furiosa stays. Max leaves. It’s their nature. 

Except, he hasn’t. He _isn’t_. He’s standing here, bare skin pimpling in the chill. Dust is settling on the fine hairs of his chest, the cold sweat of anxiety trickling down the small of his back.

It’s a strange thing, this. He’d tried to run, and he hadn’t made it, and he’d tried to run _again_ , and every moment away was just another nightmare fever-dream of a man whose worst enemy is himself. 

He’d woken up somewhere south of Bartertown in the driver’s seat of a car he didn’t remember finding, with water and guzzoline he didn’t remember acquiring. There was a not-insignificant amount of blood crusted on his clothes, and none of it seemed to be his own. 

The memories trickled in over the next series of days. He’d run into the Rock Riders. He’d traded information and scavenged tools for guzzoline and supplies. He’d done what he’s always done: gotten what he needed any way he could, and then gone on his way. 

It wasn’t until he’d hear those traders muttering about the Blood that he’d turned like a comet and headed back, slowly coming back alive with each passing mile. He’d been sick with dread - physically sick, desperately worried that she was gone and he’d run, or she’d survived and he was too late, any one of a thousand doomsday scenarios expertly concocted by a man who had survived the end of the world. 

And he _can_ survive. He’s like a cockroach, an idea, more wisp than man. He can kill. He can torture a man and leave him for dead, he can abandon a clan of defenseless children and feel _nothing_. He’d drifted around the Wasteland, a walking corpse, as blasted as the landcape and just as lifeless. 

Furiosa is looking at him, her human hand trailing on the banksia on the table. The memory of her on the lift, the blazing green heat in her eyes and then her lips pressed against his is something he’s going to carry until he dies. 

He hadn’t meant the banksia to mean - but maybe he had. Or maybe, he hadn’t meant it at the time, but…

He means it now. It’s hers. It’s always been hers. It’s been hers, and somehow, he’s always known, and the realization sends a shiver down his back that has nothing to do with the cold. 

He’d been taught as a child that water was the most powerful force on earth. A single steady drip could wear a stone to sand and clay. He was Jessie’s husband, once. He was Sprog’s father. He was the son of a man with shiny shoes, and that world is dead, but somehow, he’s still here. He’s worn to nothing, but he’s still alive. 

Clay makes dirt, the water beating solid rock into fertile soil. There are roots in him, pushing past his lungs and between his ribs, vines exploding from his throat and stomach. They coil around his fingers like Furiosa’s hair. He’d tried to rip them out, tried to deny them light, but nature always finds a way. 

He’d been afraid, but there’s a blank calm somewhere in his chest, like an empty, flat expanse of open sea. She’s afraid, too - he can see it in her face, the stiff way she’s holding herself, but she stays and fights, like she always does. 

Furiosa stays, and he’s starting to realize that whatever she does, that’s what he should do, too. He’s carrying the weight of his dead, and that will never change, but-

Maybe together, they can find some sort of redemption. He will never have a better chance. 

…

He moves at the same instant she does. Their mouths collide like falling stars, as achingly empty as the sky. The blood that throbs at his throat is the same that’s pulsing through her ears, and he tastes like salt and oil and want. His hands tangle in the unkept nest of her hair, his palms broad and firm against her scalp. 

It’s been twenty-two days since that night with the alcohol, and Furiosa is a blazing engine with an overfull tank. She’s been revving past her redline for hours, and when his mouth crushes hers, heat like the midday sun blooms outward from her core. His absence has been a gaping wound, and and every second of those twenty-two days suddenly crashes down, and she can’t get close enough. His breath is in her mouth, his hands on her hips as she strips away her dusty clothes, the prosthetic dropping to the floor with a distant thud. Skin meets skin with an electric shiver, but it’s still not close enough-

Max makes a small noise of protest when her human fingers slip into his trouser laces, and he stills her with a hand. “We don’t-” he flushes, the words clawing their way from his kiss-swollen lips - “we don’t have to-”

“Say you don’t want this,” she tells him, “and it stops.”

He growls against her mouth, his hips involuntarily hitching as her breasts graze his chest. If he says no, she’s going to lose her mind. She’s flaming guzzoline, a river of fire and need, and he’s-

“I _never_ ,” he says hoarsely, “want to hurt you.”

It’s too late for that. He’s already split her asunder, blown her wide open like a banksia. He did more damage in a hundred days than Joe had done in a thousand, but if she has to burn to be alive, she wants to be at the center of the blaze. 

His fingers tighten on hers. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeats. 

She could yell. She could be sarcastic. There are any number of responses Furiosa-the-vehicle could choose, protective anger pushing the two of them apart. 

Except...she’s tired. She’s so tired of all of that, and the heat she’s feeling is powerful and strangely tender. “I know,” she says quietly. “We’re good at hurting each other.”

“I only want this if, mm...” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. 

_The one thing I’ve wanted for myself..._

The night before Gastown, she’d been half-asleep and angry, determinedly clinging to the dream that it was Valkyrie’s hands. They are a hundred and forty days past that night - she’s still counting, she can’t stop counting - and this feels different. Stronger. More solid. 

She killed Joe because he hurt her. She stole the Wives because Joe hurt her. She’s lived the last seven thousand days thinking only of her own survival, reacting in pain and rage. She’s taken what she’s needed, her only alliances done out of necessity and kept at arm’s length. 

Beneath her palm, she feels Max twitch, the animal parts of him responding to pressure and warmth. He wants this as much as she does, and beyond the immediate flare of need she feels in her own core, she wants to see what he does. How he is. She’s fought with him and against him, and she suddenly, desperately needs to know what his face looks like when she’s the one working through his gears. She wants him to find solace in her body. 

Once, he gave her his blood, and it’s singing through her body. She wants to be the one to give him comfort like she’s never wanted anything before. 

He’s still looking at her, hope tinged with guarded reservation, and it feels like the moment the milkers opened the water valves, a great wave cascading down. “Yes, I want this,” Furiosa tells him, and the words are swallowed by his mouth, his hands coming up to cup her face. He drinks her in like he’s drinking water after a thousand days of drought, and for several long, dense moments, she forgets that she has limbs, forgets that she’s trying to untie his trousers. 

They kiss. Her stump is hooked around his neck, and his hands slide down to her waist, his fingers trailing down her spine. Dust has drifted into the messy folds of the blankets, and when they fall into the bed it puffs up around them. He covers her with his body, and instead of feeling trapped, she finds the weight delicious. She arches against him, skin on skin, her human hand marvelling at the broad expanse of his back. 

He kisses his way down her cheek and her collarbone, pressing his face into the space between her breasts and breathing deeply. The sound he makes is guttural, almost transcendent, and she feels him straining hard against worn leather. 

“Say no-” he starts, but at that moment she pulls his trouser laces free and he loses all power of speech. 

She’s touched many men. In the Citadel, sex is a commodity like anything, and before she’d had the authority of her Imperator grease, she’d traded irrumation for supplies or favors. None of these transactions were conducted with any gentleness, and for a moment, she’s lost. War Boys tended to like it hard and fast, but she can’t make herself touch Max that way. 

“Wait,” he says, and then his mouth descends onto one breast, slowly licking around the tip until she’s squirming, desperate to fill the slick void between her legs. He kisses his way down, and she suddenly remembers Valkyrie, of long afternoons spent under oilcloth, hiding from their mothers in the dunes on the outskirts of the Green Place. 

She’d been little more than a child then, blooming into womanhood with her best friend at her side. She is nothing like that girl, but Max is kissing the scar he made, and she lets herself relax. 

“Is this okay?” he asks, resting his chin on the curve of her mons. “I mean, is this-”

“Don’t- don’t stop.” His stubble is catching on the stiff little hairs, and her engines are choking at their redlines. She needs pressure, she needs-

He takes one, slow tentative lick, and the noise she makes claws itself from her throat. 

He walks her to the precipice, gaining confidence with each stroke, but before he can push her over the edge, she reaches down and gently tugs at his hair. “Come here, fool.”

“‘S’okay?” 

She kisses him. His lips are slick with the sharp sweetness of her body. “Yes.”

When he slides in, there’s a moment of panic, of wholly alien fullness, and despite herself, she makes a small noise of pain. He immediately freezes, eyes round with alarm. “Should I-”

“No! No, it’s just-” She can’t say what it is. It’s Joe, grunting above her as she held the pillow over her face and tried to die. It’s the Organic Mechanic, his fingers probing and stretching-

It’s Max. It’s being this close to another person, letting another person be this close to _her_. It’s the taste of her own juice in his mouth, the heaviness of his hips between hers. It’s the way she can feel him shaking, can feel him swell inside of her. He’s looking down at her with an expression of terrified wonder, and for one wild moment, she realizes that he has ceded to her all power. If she asked him to stop right now, _he would stop_ , and there would be absolutely no consequence. 

He’s giving this to her. 

She kisses him, long and slow and deep, and feels him relax as the tension bleeds away. He mouths down her neck, nibbling at the dip above her clavicle. “You are,” he breathes, and it is its own proclamation. 

They keep moving. 

He is thick and warm, and one hand cups the back of her head while the other strokes slow circles between her legs. She’s so close to the edge that it takes almost no effort at all, and then she’s pitching backward off a cliff as he clings to her and shudders, every single muscle in his body clenching at once. 

It’s the first time she’s ever seen anything close to bliss on his face.

When it’s over, he’s slumped against her neck, her human hand idly stroking the tousled mess of his hair. There is sand in her mouth and sand behind his ears. Her thighs are sticky, and for a split second, she remembers the Mechanic’s admonishment - _keep every drop inside!_ before reality sinks back in. This isn’t Joe. This is Max, warm and sleepy beneath her chin. 

She is running new tracks over an old road.

“...hnnkay?” The words are lost somewhere near her breast. 

Dag’s new daughter is alive and safe, and Max stayed, and yes, Furiosa is okay. She makes a contented noise, and he kisses the skin at her armpit, snorting a little as the curly little hairs tickle his face.

There’s a pool of warmth in her belly like sweet summer wine, and just before she drifts off to sleep, she thinks to herself, maybe this is what redemption feels like. 

Maybe this is something she could learn to deserve.


	117. Chapter 117

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I, um, apparently haven't posted in almost a month. I'm so sorry lovelies. My litany of excuses:
> 
> 1\. Moar major renovation projects. This weekend I'm tearing apart another bathroom!  
> 2\. I had the plague of death last week. It was as unpleasant as it was unanticipated.  
> 3\. I am, apparently, starting my own business. Life forces are conspiring to make me a licensed contractor. So. That's a thing that's happening. It is both terrifying and exhilarating. 
> 
> Also, HOLY WHAT it's been a year since I posted the very first chapter of Length & Breadth. I feel like I should write an ode to you all, the readers, because without you I absolutely never would have gotten this far, but...what y'all want is more chapters, so I'm gonna channel my writing energy into that instead. What you need to know is that I love you, and I am so grateful for your help and support during this long, crazy project. It's been an incredible amount of fun, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

They’re walking in the dunes, the whisper of the wind in the razor-sharp grass a countermelody to the featureless roar of the waves. This is a dream, familiar territory he’s walked over and over and over again. If he looks over his shoulder, he knows he’ll see the roof of the beach house, its wooden shingles gray and chipped. 

“This is the ocean,” he says to Furiosa. 

She surveys the horizon. “It doesn’t seem to end.”

Everything ends.

They walk for awhile, and they kiss. When she pulls him down into the dunes, he says abruptly, “This is where we made Sprog.”

“I know,” she says, and how can she know, but he’s lost in her hair, and it almost sounds like Jessie speaking, playful, teasing, gentle. Beneath his hands, he can almost feel the swell of her belly, the urgent little kicks of his son inside her. 

_How can we not?_

In the interminable time of dreams, they fuck slowly, lost in sweat and sand and the unending roar of the surf. The sky is gray and heavy, the horizon tangled in the sea. She is warm and wet, and her body fits around his like the teeth of two perfectly-machined gears. 

“Do you want this?” Furiosa whispers, and then he’s coming awake, his erection carefully cradled in her hand. It’s well past dawn, the light from the window heavy and red with the lingering dust storm. For all that she’s holding his most sensitive part, she looks terrified and vulnerable, and it’s an expression that doesn’t sit easily on the broad planes of her face.

He thinks of her casual familiarity with a rifle, and the way she hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger when she had the shot. He’s been in this position before, close enough to taste her sweat, and before he can stop himself, he’s kissing her, and she’s kissing back, the sweetness of her touch and the sourness of morning mingling on his tongue. 

He’s drowning in her. The need to taste her is overwhelming his need to breathe, and he’s going to drown in her mouth, drowning in this woman who has never seen an ocean. 

He kisses her until the fear dissolves, and then she surges up against him. He has a split second to think how he just wants to keep kissing her until she touches him the way she touches her weapon, and then she _is_ touching him that way, and he comes in a great, shuddery mess. 

When the stars clear, she is smiling at him, her hair powdered with dust and dust in the creases of her mouth. She is so beautiful - and so unexpectedly _peaceful_ \- that all he can do is stare, bonelessly relaxed and utterly lost for words. 

“Fool,” she says affectionately, and rolls out of bed, leaving him to helplessly gaze at the perfect curve of her ass. 

He hears her twist the sink taps, and then remove the toilet tank lid. “Pumps are out. Don’t flush if you want to wash up.”

He hums, mostly to himself. He has no intention of washing, possibly ever. He can smell the heavy perfume of her body on his own skin, can still taste her in his mouth. “You look like an overheated crow,” she says archly, and he grins, unapologetic.

Flopping over on his stomach, he watches as she sponges herself clean. “You’re, mm, lovely,” he says, because she is, long and lean and dangerous in a way that feels far too huge for his chest to contain. 

Her amputated arm twitches closer to her stomach, as if instinct is telling her to hide her imperfections, but he can tell by the curve of her lips that she’s pleased, despite herself. “Fool.” 

It’s a rare gift, the knowledge that the feared Imperator Furiosa blushes at a compliment. He tucks it close to his chest, where it glows like a warm, precious coal. 

****

In the end, it takes them far too long to get themselves together. The act of getting dressed is hampered by wandering hands and mischievous lips. The faucets are dry, the pumps gone silent, and Furiosa should be worried, but any concern has been flooded with the strange giddiness that bubbles from somewhere deep between her lungs. Max isn’t _quite_ grinning, but there’s definitely a satisfied curl to his lips, his eyes crinkled at the edges like a sleepy lizard. 

Mothers help her, she’s _happy_ , almost deliriously so. It’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once, and she feels almost ragged, a scrap of fabric being consumed by delighted sparks. She can feel his hands ghosting across her skin, his lips against hers, and it’s electric, it’s wild like gunpowder or the sudden flare of burning guzzoline. Her heart is tripping in her chest, her head spinning with too little sleep and not enough kissing. _The one thing I wanted_...

She doesn’t know if she’s ever actually _gotten_ something she wanted. It feels like a sudden lurch, like a hard stop. Part of her is still stiff and fearful, anticipating the impact of the steering wheel against her face. 

The bulk of the storm has passed, leaving a haze of orange in its wake. Depending on the winds, the dust will hang in the sky for hours or days, although when she and Max cross the bridge to the northernmost tower, Furiosa can already see the silent mountains starting to take shape in the distance. The sun is a white orb, an impossibly perfect circle burning above a bloody world.

In the Council Room, Capable has her ledgers spread out over the large table, Jilly, Nakmin and Toast at her side. Keno stands nearby, his white paint gone ochre and his hands to his elbows smeared with black grease. “Good,” Capable says in greeting. “I was hoping you’d gotten some sleep.”

Furiosa grits her teeth against the heat that’s suddenly crawling up her face, but it’s too late. Max is intently studying a nick in the table, but his lips twitch. The girls miss nothing; Max and Furiosa have betrayed themselves as certainly as if they’d walked in naked and holding hands. 

“ _Seriously???_ ” Toast snaps. She stabs a finger at Capable, who is giggling helplessly into her fist. “This isn’t- don’t you _dare_ tell Mari! She does _not_ win again.”

“Old gals know,” Jilly cackles, her eyes glittering. “Especially that one.”

Toast throws up her hands. “I already owe her fifteen hours of clinic work.”

“I told you not to bet against her,” Capable manages. “We _told_ you.”

“It’s unfair, is what it is,” Toast grumbles, and shoots Max with a glare that could melt steel. “I was rooting for you not to touch the goods, mate. Now I’ve got thirty hours of clinic duty.” 

Max shrugs magnificently, and Toast rolls her eyes, bumping hard into Furiosa’s shoulder on the way out of the room. “Get it, girl,” she mutters. “I mean. Whatever.”

“You’re all heart,” Furiosa says dryly, and is rewarded with a smirk. 

Now that the clouds are slowly dissipating, the damage can be assessed. Capable looks up at Keno. “Any luck with the windmills yet?”

He frowns. “Thought I’d have better news,” he admits. “The emergency repairs we made after the Gastown siege were supposed to hold until we got some new metals, but we haven’t.” His eyes flutter like it’s a grave personal failing; under Joe, he probably would have been demoted, if not outright killed. 

“How bad is it?” Furiosa asks. 

“En’t got good things to say.” He swallows hard. “Had fifty-two turbines, before...well, when Immortan was in charge. Lost seventeen to Gastown, ten more to the fires.”

Capable’s pencil hovers over a ledger entry. “Those are the ones that couldn’t be repaired, right?”

He nods. “Cannibalized the parts to fix the others, had about twenty working near full efficiency.”

Furiosa folds her arms. “And now?”’

“Eight.” He says the word like he’s expecting a blow. “Eight still working. Got pieces of the others, but...that wind. The wind was kamicrazy, tons of debris-” 

“No one is blaming you,” Capable says gently, and Keno relaxed a little. “We know you and your crews are working as hard as you can.”

Jilly breaks in. “What’s the minimum to run the water pumps, eh? We got no water in the kitchens.”

Nakmin nods. “The hydroponics will last three days, but any longer, and the evaporation will start bringing wilt.”

The Repair Boy eyes the ceiling, fingers ticking off a mental count. “If we throttle back the flow…?”

“Need one pump, full throttle,” Nakmin says. “Just to get it up top. Less than full throttle, it doesn’t make it.”

“Okay, full throttle, one pump. That’s…ten? Ten turbines. Twelve to be safe.””

Max shifts in place. “And we’ve only got eight?”

“Eight not badly damaged,” Keno says quickly. “I can get the others up, maybe another two by the afternoon-”

“What happens if you can’t?” Jilly asks. “What if they’re too broken? Then what?”

He looks so miserable that Capable breaks in. “He can do it. His crews work hard. We’ll figure it out.”

“Water doesn’t flow, we lose all leverage,” Jilly insists. “Without the water, this place is nothing.”

Keno isn’t an electrical expert. The old War Boy who maintained the windmills had gone with the Armada, and hadn’t returned. Keno is an expert mechanic, but Furiosa’s seen the pumps - they’re old, older even than Joe’s reign. If damaged, they might be repaired with a bit of difficulty, but she is quite certain the expertise needed to build one from scratch was lost when the world fell. “We can’t risk blowing a pump,” she cautions. Gastown might be willing to send engineers to their aid, but she doesn’t trust the Actuary not to take advantage of her weakness. 

Suddenly, the memory of Max against her skin feels very far away. “Keno, get your crews up there,” Furiosa says. “Can you get me a full damage assessment in an hour? With estimates for repair time?”

He nods. “Yes, Boss.”

“Good. We’ll triage then.” She turns to Jilly and Nakmin. “Figure out your minimum water requirements, the absolute lowest amount we need to maintain health and safety. If Keno can’t get everything fixed-”

“I _can_ ,” he insists, but there’s a desperate pitch to his voice. 

“-if Keno can’t get everything fixed, we might be running on rations. We should know what that looks like.”

Capable nibbles on the tip of her pencil. “What about the Wretched? They need water too!”

“We need to know our baseline first. If we’re dry, they’re dry.” She licks her lips, already feeling the desert creeping in. Without water, there is no Citadel. It’s Aqua-Cola, the foundation of the Citadel’s power. Without water, they can’t grow crops, and they can’t trade for guzzoline. 

Just as her skull starts buzzing with panic, Max brushes against her back, a touch so light it could almost be accidental. “We get the numbers,” he says. “We see what we got. Then we make the hard choices, mm?”

Furiosa nods. It’s another start to yet another hard day.


	118. Chapter 118

As the clouds slowly dissipate, the damage reports trickle in, and the news from every shamefaced Pup hits Furiosa like a solid fist to the solar plexus. Nakmin’s crew maintains a small shed of salvaged meteorological equipment, and the winds are the highest that have ever been recorded at the Citadel; the damage is staggering. “Used to be some kind of outpost, back Before,” the head gardener explains. “I got all this handed to me, but old-timers said there was more tech, real shine and bright.”

“What happened to it?” asks Capable. She’s already thumbing through the dusty ledger, absorbing the data.

Nakmin shrugs. “Salvage, maybe. Some stuff from Before just don’t work right, so maybe it was better as something else.”

Amy squints at the records. “Storms have gotten worse over the years.” She points to a particular entry several pages back. “I remember that one. A right bastard, that was. Tore out half the trees in the Green Place, and all the chooks - just gone, sucked right into the sky.”

Furiosa thinks of her crew, of loyal War Boys lifted up to Valhalla in a tornado of flame. It had been stupid, to try and drive through that storm, but she’d had the Wives in her hold and Joe’s wrath at her back. She honestly hadn’t expected to make it, just clung to the wheel and tried not to die. 

Her stomach clenches hard at the memory. 

The infrastructure has been hit the hardest, the windmills, scaffolds and cranes snapped and sheared at their bases. Red dust is mounded in dunes and drifts, kicking up in thick clouds as workers trudge through. Even with her scarf and goggles, Furiosa can still taste the dry, metallic scratch of dust in the back of her throat. 

“Plants seem okay,” Nakmin says, lifting the edge of one of the protective cloths to reveal the crops underneath. The canola is flattened, but still green. If anything, the weight of the fallen sand kept the cloths in place, saving the plants from the scouring winds. 

It’s a small mercy. There’s no saying what’s in the dust, or if the wind carried some insidious, invisible poison. Max has Mari’s handheld radiation detector cradled in his broad hands, frowning down at the little red needle as it jumps and crackles. “Dont!” he snaps at a wayward Pup, dragging the child out of a nearby dune. “Mask. Where’s your mask?”

“‘S hot,” the Pup whines. 

“You wear it,” Max growls, and then relents. “Here. Tie your scarf, mm. Like this. Better?”

Furiosa thinks of the child he lost, of the way he runs his fingers down the ridge of her spine when he thinks she’s asleep. She and Max are similar in age, she thinks - they both carry flecks of gray in their hair, and thousands of days in their scars - but sometimes, he seems so much older. The way he talks, the way he is...he’s known civilization. He’s known what it means to be soft in a place where softness doesn’t get destroyed. He hides gentleness like a feral dog hides a putrid wound. 

The place he’s from has to have been wiped off the map; he wouldn’t have left his woman and child any other way. She shuffles down the rows of canola, shaking sand from the protective cloths and thinking about the Green Place. She doesn’t believe in supernatural powers - at least, not in the way Katie used to - but she can’t help but feel like maybe, somehow, Joe really was part immortan, and his power had protected the Citadel from all the chaos it faces in his absence. He’d reigned for close to forty years. She’s struggling after less than two hundred days. 

She trudges on, a cloud of dust in her wake. 

It’s one long day after another. The sky gradually lightens, the bloody haze lifting to a muddy blue. The sun has started its slow climb back to its summer apex, but the wind still pierces fabric with its frigid breath; it’ll be another fifty days at least before the heat returns, dry and oppressive. In the meantime, everyone wraps tightly in whatever cloth they can find, any exposed skin slathered in white to ward off blistering sunburn. 

Gastown has signalled once, confirming that the Citadel survived. “We can’t give them water now,” Jilly states emphatically. “We’re barely pumping enough for ourselves!”

“They can’t know that,” Toast retorts. “They’ll use it against us somehow. We can’t let them know.”

“We’ll stall on the next delivery,” promises Capable. “I’ll signal that we’re still performing repairs.”

It’s an impossible situation. In the past, if there were issues with the windmills, Joe would order the pumps be run on guzzoline generators, but there just isn’t enough guzz for that. Keno’s crews have been pushing themselves to exhaustion trying to get the turbines running, but the metal is twisted, and requires a lot of working and welding to get it back into shape. Welding takes power, which takes guzzoline, and they’ve already had to siphon fuel out of two of the smaller bikes. 

Several of the treadmillers come up with a plan to use the lift’s giant treadmill as an alternative power source, but Keno shakes his head. “It’s a good idea,” he says, “but those chains are welded in place. We’d have to decouple them, and that leaves us without a lift-”

“What do we need more, water or down?” Jilly asks, crossing her arms. “Seems to me, water’s the pressing matter.”

“The lift is how we get the tanker down,” Furiosa says tiredly. There’s a stiff knot of tension at the back of her skull that won’t go away. “If we can’t get the tanker down, we can’t get more guzzoline.” No more guzzoline means no more repairs, and no way to acquire supplies; they’d be stranded five hundred feet above the desert, a failed stronghold. The precariousness of the situation is clotting in her lungs. One wrong step - one missed gear, one wrong signal - and Gastown could easily decide to send their war party back over, and she won’t have the resources to defend against it. The Actuary measures everything in terms of risk, and she isn’t at all certain where his tipping point lies. He could be biding his time, waiting for the Citadel to collapse in on itself, waiting for them to become so desperate he can just take over in a single bloodless coup.

And the Bullet Farm...it still lurks on the horizon, an unknown quantity, dark and silent. 

For now, there is a makeshift bucket brigade, and every combustable drop of fuel is being siphoned into the welding generators. Every available hand is hauling water or sweeping sand or hammering scrap into usable metal. When the daylight fades, the cranklights flicker to life, tiny pools of ice-blue glowing in the darkness. 

It’s long past sunset when Mari comes to find her. Furiosa is chasing a loose wire through one of the damaged turbines, the frayed copper lost in the cranklight’s deep shadows. She’s been awake so long even the large wires are starting to blur together, and she has to blink hard to recognize the figure stepping out of the darkness. 

“I brought food,” Mari says quietly. “You haven’t eaten in hours. Come, while it’s still warm.”

The wire is lost. Her fingers are numb with fatigue and cold, and growing more useless by the hour. The soup is thick and peppery with canola meal, and she’s suddenly so hungry she’s shaking. “Any news?” 

“Capable says we’re up to eleven working turbines,” the old Vuvalini says. “It’s enough for a single pump, as long as the wind stays strong. I made Keno get some rest; he was liable to fall off the edge of the cliff, as tired as he was.”

Everyone is working hard. It occurs to Furiosa that she’s never seen such effort, even during Joe’s more ambitious projects. It was easy to work hard under Joe, because if you didn’t, you’d be tossed off the lift. Joe had very specific ideas about the usefulness of a person, and no qualms about discarding them once their utility ran out; she’d seen it firsthand a thousand times, from a sobbing Milk Mother demoted to treadmiller when her milk ran dry, to the dozens of Wives he’d cast aside. 

The food in her mouth is suddenly dry and tasteless as the dust around her. She tries to swallow, but she can’t, not when her throat is clogged with the blood and bones- 

“What are you thinking, pet?” Mari’s voice breaks through her memory, jarring her back to wakefulness. “It helps if you fill the spoon before you put it in your mouth.”

The bowl is cold in her hands. She has no idea how long she was lost inside herself. It’s hard. It’s always hard. Furiosa is strong, she’s always been strong, but she’s cold and tired, and her human fingers are bleeding in the cold. 

Sometimes, it feels like there’s no end to the running. It feels like every step is through drifting sand, and she’s falling behind no matter how hard she tries to keep up. Her engines are running far past their redline, but Joe is still behind her, creeping ever closer.

“Ah, pet,” Mari murmurs, and scoots closer to pull Furiosa into the warm embrace of her thick wrap. “We keep moving. We just keep moving.”

Furiosa wipes at her nose. “Do we ever _stop_ moving?”

In the stark contrast of the cranklight, the older woman offers a wry, gentle smile. “The world ended, but it’s still spinning, eh? Maybe it’ll stop someday, but until then, we keep on. Not much else we can do.” She presses dry lips to Furiosa’s dusty forehead. “Out of the womb, everything hurts, but we do what we can to make it better for those who come after us.”

The turbine is broken. The world is broken. Furiosa herself has been broken and remade so many times, she’s a patchwork of welds and jury-rigged cable, but she’s still here. 

She lifts the soup to her lips. It’s not a victory, but maybe, it’s enough.


	119. Chapter 119

Mari sends her to bed like the child she used to be, and Furiosa is too tired to protest. Max is already half-buried in the dusty blankets, still fully dressed and his hands dark with grease. He makes a few vague noises as she slides in beside him, but doesn’t come fully awake. He is warm and solid, and immediately wraps himself around her like some mythical eight-armed creature. 

Once, he’d held a gun to her head as she thumbed the kill sequence. Now, his breathing hasn’t even changed. His trust is a gift, rare and perfect chrome, and for a moment she can’t breathe past the crystalline incredulity in her chest. 

She doesn’t sleep. Before the storm, she’d been hell-bent on investigating the Bullet Farm, to see about the mysterious Blood and who or what claimed to carry Joe’s immortan bloodline. Even if the Blood haven’t provoked a fight - at least, not directly - the Citadel has a lot of empty guns, and a lot of hungry enemies. Knowledge is power, and an unknown quantity can be deadly. She needs to _know_. 

Furiosa needs ammunition. She needs fuel. She needs water, both to grow food and to trade. Without a functional pumping system, her assets become much more difficult to obtain, and if she has nothing to trade, she’s no better off than the Wretched whose makeshift hovels ring the buttes of the Citadel. 

She can fight; of course she can. She’s a weapon, bred and built and honed in the stark battlefield of the Wasteland. She’s just starting to lose sight of a target. The Council is ostensibly the ruling party of the Citadel, but she’s the one who tore Joe’s jaw from his skull and destroyed the political structure of a region in the process. She’s the one stained with the blood of her dead mothers; she will not allow the tenuous refuge the former Wives have built to crumble beneath the weight of her own sins. 

_If you can’t fix what’s broken_...

Perhaps insanity is all that’s left, when you’re standing on the losing side, but she doesn’t get to choose another way. She doesn’t get to make the selfish choice, doesn’t get to take Max’s offer to just get in the car and bolt. If she’s a person, if she’s no longer the vehicle she once was, then she has to stay here and face all that she’s done. There are wrongs she’s committed that can never be made right, but perhaps somehow, she can find a little redemption in her attempts to atone. 

If she dies for this-

Max is warm against her back, his body flush with her spine. She can smell him in the blankets, sharp and masculine. On impulse, she rolls over, tucking her head into the hollow of his shoulder. _The one thing I wanted_...

He’s here. She doesn’t deserve his kindness, but he’s giving it regardless. She’s lived for so long under the specter of her own annihilation that she isn’t at all sure what it means to want to live. She measures the passage of time in days out of long-ingrained habit. She wears the consequences of failed escape attempts in bones that ache in the damp. She thinks she probably had plans for a future when she was a girl, but she’s been surviving one day at a time for so many thousands of days that anything further away feels vast and terrifying. 

She wonders what it feels like for Max. She wonders if he has the same warmth in his chest, the same nagging emptiness when they’re apart. Hope is such a foreign concept, but...she thinks maybe she could learn not to dread waking up every day. 

****

She’s only just drifted off when there’s a sharp rap on the door. “Boss, we got incoming,” Ello calls out tightly. “Need your eyes on.”

_We keep moving._

Max is right by her side, scrubbing at his face as she’s tugging on her boots. Ello doesn’t even blink when they exit together. 

“Lookouts just spotted it,” the War Boy says. “Too far out, but definitely coming this way.”

Furiosa swallows hard. “Buzzards?” Buzzards, they can sit out, unless they’re acquired some of the Bullet Farm’s grenade launchers or rockets. Any kind of ranged projectile that can reach the top of the terraces, and she’ll have to retaliate, to protect the infrastructure that’s still so fragile. 

Ello shrugs. “Coming from the east. Could be, but seems small.”

“A single vehicle?”

“Too far out.” 

The sandstorm is two days gone, but there’s still a haze hanging in the sky, interfering with the telescope’s higher magnification. There’s a cloud on the eastern horizon, a bare aberration in the waste that only looks unnatural to Furiosa’s long-trained eye. 

Amy frowns. “I’m not as sharp as I used to be, that’s for sure. I can’t see a damn thing.”

They stand in the mouth of the skull, Furiosa peering into the hanging telescope, and Max squinting into her old spyglass. “There’s definitely something coming,” she says. She looks over at Amy. “Where’s Ace?”

“Already assembling what defense we’ve got,” Toast answers. “Keno’s closing things up, and Capable’s getting everyone into the inner rooms.”

Amy shakes her head, adjusting the rifle slung over her shoulder. “Isn’t much. I’ve got a handful of bullets myself, but even one per man, it’ll be a hard fight.”

It’s impossible to tell how big of a party is coming their way, if it’s a lone motorcycle or a convoy of bloodthirsty Buzzards. They don’t have time to fight a long siege; they still need to fix the windmills and clear off the gardens. If the windmills aren’t fixed, they don’t have water, and if the plants stay buried, they’ll turn pale and withered. No food, no water…

She feels her throat closing up. It’s just like the Green Place, the slow death of an oasis and everything that depends on it. Nothing will be left but the crows, and the desperate souls that survive on their poisoned flesh. 

With a little bit of luck, the riders - whoever they are - will head for Gastown, traders come for guzzoline and its chemical byproducts. 

Furiosa knows very well what kind of luck she has. 

“Well,” says Max finally, “guess we’d better, mm, get to it.”

That first ride to Gastown, Dag had come down and marked them all with three green stripes, her symbol for the new Citadel culture. Now, she’s curled up with her yet-unnamed daughter, sore and exhausted and incandescent with frustration. Somehow, though, Furiosa still feels the energy change, as if the marking has already been done: as she helps close siege doors and distribute the last few handfuls of bullets, the faces she sees are grim with determination. At some point, the Citadel has changed from being a place Joe controlled and allowed others to live, to being a place where cooperation ensures mutual survival. Like Dag’s carefully tended seeds, a sense of ownership has taken root in the stone. 

Jilly nods at Furiosa as she passes. “Bastards aren’t taking us down,” the head cook says firmly. “Not while I got breath, anyway.”

Furiosa thinks the tightness in her chest might actually be _pride_. 

 

****

They’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the lift, watching as the travelers coalesce into tangible form. Through the haze, the hardy bikes and horned helmets are unmistakable. 

“Rock Riders,” Furiosa breathes. 

“Huh.” Max considers the cloud of dust. “So they made it.” His expression is inscrutable. 

Beside them, Capable fidgets. “We don’t have any more bullets,” she says, stating the obvious. “How are we going to fight them off?” 

“We have to give them what we owe,” Furiosa says. “We can’t fight them right now. We just _can’t_.”

“Have we ever traded with them?” Amy asks, frowning. 

Once, thinks Furiosa. Another betrayal, more blood on her hands. 

“You promised them guzzoline,” Capable says. “What was it? Two thousand gallons?”

Toast rolls her toothpick between her teeth. “Three.” She shakes her head. “Don’t have a tenth of that right now.” 

Alerted by the sound of the motors, the Wretched are edging away. They’ve been gathered at the base of the towers, increasingly desperate since the windmills were damaged. Capable’s tried twice to calm them with the public address system, but there isn’t enough power for all the giant speakers; even if there were, it’s futile attempt. Thirsty people cannot be pacified with sound. The Wretched have come to identify incoming vehicles with impending violence, and they retreat into the holes and hovels they’ve dug around the Citadel’s base. 

Furiosa cannot blame them. 

There are fifteen bikes wending their way up toward the Citadel, edging around unfamiliar dunes and the half-buried carcasses of Buzzard vehicles too burnt to salvage. As they come close enough to make out the details on individual bikes, Mari suddenly clutches at Amy’s arm. “That quilting, look,” she croaks, “it’s her quilting-”

“Salvage,” Amy says fiercely, “it’s all salvage, you know it is-”

Furiosa’s stomach clenches painfully, and for one long moment, she’s sure she’s going to throw up. She wants to call the bikes stolen, but she can’t, not when she’s done the very same thing; they are all of them crows, filthy carrion-eaters picking scraps from whatever bones they can find. 

“Don’t see a lot of guns,” Max says. He’s peering into the spyglass, tracking the Rock Riders as they approach. 

“Doesn’t mean they’re not here for blood,” Amy mutters, patting Mari’s hand. 

The lead motorcycle circles in the dust and rolls to a stop directly below the platform. 

The rider takes off their helmet, and sets it on the seat, walking stiffly to the front of the bike. From this distance, it’s impossible to tell their identity; they’re wrapped in anonymous rags, caked in dust. The rider puts their hands to their mouth and Furiosa feels her whole body clench, waiting for the list of demands. Whatever it is, she’ll have to acquiesce. The turbines are slowly being repaired. The pumps are chugging slowly, the Citadel on the brink of collapse. She has no fallback plan, no way of escape.

It’s not a list of demands. It’s a high, ululating cry that bounces off the rock and straight into Furiosa’s bones. 

“Wait, that sounds like-” says Capable, but Furiosa’s already moving, grabbing a belay rope and leaping into the air. 

Max’s aborted yelp follows her down, the rope burning through the skin of her human palm. 

She lands hard and comes up rolling, coughing and sputtering but letting the momentum push her forward. Valkyrie opens her arms, and when they meet it’s like Miss Giddy’s old stories of two atoms colliding, particles spinning off into space from the impact. It’s like the moment at the tower, but more. 

Her heart cannot handle the depth of what she’s feeling. Val is here. Val came to find her. 

Val is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been sitting on the bones of this segment for SIX GODDAMN MONTHS. 
> 
> You have no idea how excited I am to share it with you.


	120. Chapter 120

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a lil bit shorter than usual, just because I think the next one's shaping up to be a giant. 
> 
> You're all so very amazing - thank you for existing.

When she first steers a motorcycle on her own, Furiosa is somewhere in the gangly wasteland of early adolescence, a loosely-bound accumulation of elbows, knees and bruises. Val is still pudgy with childhood, slightly younger but no less stubborn. 

Neither one of them is strong enough to control the larger bikes of their mothers, but this is a smaller model salvaged from the last burnt-out convoy. It’s lighter - almost certainly faster - and Katie has given them strict instructions on how far out they are allowed to go. “The dunes,” Furiosa’s initiate mother says sternly, “and no further.” It’s understood that if they see any movement in the lifeless waste beyond, they will turn around and make for the safety of the Green Place, to hide in the twisted roots of stunted coolibah and let their mothers deal with the threat.

It is the greatest moment of their lives. 

The bike stutters to life, and then they’re off, Furiosa in control with Val clinging to her waist, her head tucked against Furiosa’s spine. The power is unmistakable, the exhilaration immediate. They whoop and cry into the wind. 

By the next rainy season, they will be the same height, and when they ride this way, Val will rest her chin on Furiosa’s shoulder, their hair tangling together in the wind. They will learn how to be one unit, leaning into the corners as a single body. 

When Furiosa is stolen, she will remember this. She will sit curled up in a corner of the Vault, staring through the dome at the shimmering desert, aching for the exhaust of a two-stroke motor and Val’s strong arms around her. She will whisper her dead mother’s final entreaty - _Keep moving. You keep moving_ \- over and over like a prayer, the memory of flying over open ground tucked deep in her core. 

When she wakes up without an arm, she will remember that first moment when she twisted the the throttle, how the sensation jumped through her hand and dove shivering into her bones. When she has been a captive for seven thousand days, she will walk across the sand and into Val’s waiting arms, and one day later, she will watch in her rearview mirror, helpless with rage, as Val is run down by the People Eater’s mobile refinery. 

One hundred and ninety-seven days after that, Valkyrie is standing below the Citadel lift on a bike that isn’t her own, wearing a strange amalgamation of black crow feathers and the stone-colored patchwork of the the Rock Riders. Val, who has been closer than her own heart and farther away than the moon. Val, this is _Val_ -

“You made it,” says Val, a storm of dark eyes and grinning white teeth. Her hands are in Furiosa’s hair, their foreheads pressed tightly. “I’d hoped…”

Furiosa can’t speak, can only wrap herself around Val and inhale the smell of her hair, of guzzoline and herbs and the unmistakable musk of her skin. 

Valkyrie pulls back, looking her over. “You look like hell, Fury.”

Her eyes are flooding, her throat clenched so tightly the words can barely squeeze through. “What are- I thought - you _fell_ \- and _how_...?”

Val gestures to the others who are slowly coming up behind her, standing at a wary distance. “Rock Riders picked us up.”

“We have water, but the pumps - we’ll trade, but we need to make repairs-” It comes out in a hiccupping rush. She’s as brittle as old glass, thin and ready to shatter at any moment. 

“They’ll trade, yes,” Valkyrie says gently, “but right now, we’re just here to help.”

“Help?” The word is so foreign it’s almost lost its meaning. Furiosa blinks slowly, all her gears locked and the engine screaming in confusion. 

The other riders are taking off their helmets, and for the first time, she realizes that although they’re well-armed, they’re at ease, the guns still on their backs and in their holsters. Not all the Riders look thrilled to be there, but there’s Tamar - _Tamar_ , who fell - and Maadi! - and they’re grinning at her and coming up to embrace her-

Surrounded by Vuvalini - living Vuvalini, Vuvalini who are still alive, who aren’t dead - Furiosa looks at Valkyrie, and everything inside her shatters. It comes like an implosion, a swallowed sob as she’s gripping Tamar with her prosthetic hand while Maadi’s in her human arm. Valkyrie’s expression is as fierce as an apocalyptic storm, and then Furiosa’s face is buried again in her hair. 

Everything is a wet blur. She pulls herself together long enough to snap, “Let them up. Let them _up_ ,” when Ace and Toast make noise about the Rock Riders not being trustworthy. She doesn’t care. They took her family in, and brought them back, and if they want to stab her in her sleep for the wrongs she’s done, she will offer them the knife herself. Her own bad luck broke their deal; she doesn’t blame them for any retribution they might seek. 

As soon as the lift touches down, Mari is staggering forward as fast as her bad leg will allow, hands outstretched and tears streaming down her face. Amy comes immediately after, her rifle tucked cautiously upright at her shoulder, glaring at the ambivalent escort of Rock Riders, and the ring of Wretched circling and eyeing the platform. 

“Don’t know which is brake or gas anymore,” Furiosa hears Ace grumble. “Bullet Farm paying Buzzards, Rock Riders bein’ let in..fuk-ushima, if they’re coming up, let’s get them up.”

Once, the winchman Imperator and his crew kept order on the lift, but those days are long over. Now, it’s up to Ace and Ello and their War Boys to protect against the massing Wretched. Once the lift starts to rise, the desperate crowd surges forward. There are indignant cries and wailing children, and Furiosa feels Tamar’s hand clench tightly on her human arm. 

“Why can’t they be let up?” she whispers. “Why can’t you let them?”

“Not enough water,” Toast answers curtly, giving a firm shove to an agile young man attempting to hitch a ride. “Usually we’ve got the pipes open.”

Tamar’s voice trembles oddly. “Why aren’t they open?”

“Sandstorm,” Toast says. She glances at Furiosa, frowning. “I’m sure Furi will fill you in.”

Beneath them, the lift quivers, and they rise into the Citadel.


	121. Chapter 121

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of you have left gorgeous, gorgeous notes - you _all_ leave me such lovely notes - and I thank you so very deeply for them. Things are crazier than usual at Casa Squid, but here's another chapter as my heartfelt thanks. Love you all!

It’s a strange reunion. It’s too overwhelming, too much at once, and Furiosa fades away from herself, seeing everything as if from a distance. She needs to be present for the potential threat, needs to be steady as Val leans on her for support, her movements stiff and slow. She just...she can’t. She’s blank as weatherworn rock veined with ice-white mica, all of it brittle and crumbling. She has duties to perform, a role to maintain, but she is blowing sand slipping down a featureless dune. 

Mari is checking Val over with a fierce gaze. “Your back?” she asks quietly.

“Her spine,” Maadi interjects. She’s wearing a hand-sewn patch over one eye, jagged scars slicing through the lines of her face. The fabric is heavily embroidered, a name echoing through Furiosa’s mind from another life: brocade. “It’s a damn miracle she’s even walking.”

“We keep moving,” Val mutters. Her fingers are sharp points in Furiosa’s skin, urgent and impossible. 

“And you,” continues Mari, reaching over to place a gentle open palm on Maadi’s face. “Oh love, look at you.”

Maadi chuckles. “Least it wasn’t my sight eye. Besides, you’re one to say. You’re limping like a one-legged chook.”

Mari stares at her for a long moment, her body clenching against what might be a laugh or a sob, and then she lets out a hysterical whoop, throwing her arms around Maadi’s neck. 

Amy rolls her eyes, lips twitching in amusement. “‘One-legged chook’? ...Fuckinell, Dee, we missed you.”

There’s a pressure building in Furiosa’s chest, rising like a coming storm, and she meets Capable’s troubled eyes. “Your companions,” Furiosa says to Val. “Introduce me.”

The Rock Riders are sticking close to their bikes, guns and grenades all within easy reach, a faceless army of twelve. One of the Rock Riders shifts their stance uneasily. “We know you. Introductions are unnecessary.”

She knows that voice, the growl behind it. “We had a deal.”

“You broke it,” the Rock Rider leader snarls. “You said a few vehicles in pursuit-”

She grits her teeth, a hard swell of anger rising in her throat. “You knew who I was-”

“You brought three war parties!” This, hoarsely, from the shorter Rider to the leader’s left. The shorter rider lunges forward, but the leader grabs their arm. “Seventeen dead, _seventeen-_ ”

“Talk through me, if you must,” Val says calmly. “Let me be the intermediary. We agreed on that.”

“Got no choice, do we?” the shorter rider snaps. “Half-dead clan, water gone, nothing left but cliffs and death.”

“Why’d you come here, then?” Toast asks. 

The leader crosses his arms. “Your scav was...convincing.”

“Our scav…?”

The shorter Rider jerks her chin toward Max, currently lurking on the edge of the conversation. “Him. Told us there’d be water and guzz. Traded us a bike for tools.” They shake their head. “Though he was a damn fool for that.”

Max. Max went to the Rock Riders. He’d gone to the Rock Riders - he’d said he had - 

Val is with the Rock Riders. 

There’s a roar in her ears like sand lifted on a boiling wind. He’d known. He’d _known_ Valkyrie and the others were alive, and he didn’t say? He’d made a deal with the Rock Riders without consulting her? Without even letting her know that the Citadel had been entered into an agreement? He’d let her _mourn_ -

The noise she makes claws its way from her throat. 

He’s flinching away from her, stammering. “Didn’t, mm - didn’t know if they’d make it-” 

“What do you mean, you didn’t know?” Capable asks carefully. “Max, did you know the Vuvalini were alive?”

His head whips up, and Furiosa can see the answer in the panicked whites of his eyes. “No! Wasn’t at the camp. Just...in the flats. The canyon. Would have _said_ , would have-” His jaw works furiously as the words choke away his breath.

He would have come back. She almost believes it. 

Max looks to the stone ceiling, his hands working in nervous fists. He glances from Capable to the Rock Riders, and then back to Furiosa. “I knew there was owing. Thought maybe…” He shakes his head. “Didn’t know if they’d actually come.”

A distant part of her mind thinks this is perfectly reasonable. The Rock Riders might become allies if the trade is successfully negotiated, and even though the Green Place is long gone, having a shortcut through the wall of mountains would still be valuable. It’s a long way from their territory, and he’d been right to think they probably wouldn’t come. 

And Valkyrie - Valkyrie is _here_ , she is warm and solid and _alive_ \- and indignant anger and blazing gratitude are tangled in Furiosa’s lungs, battling for dominant.

“You didn’t know,” Capable repeats. “Max. You know how important this is.”

He shakes his head. “Didn’t know.” His gaze skitters across Furiosa’s face, his whole body twisting in on itself. “I promise you.”

“Well, they’re here now,” Mari says, patting Maadi’s arm. 

Valkyrie palms the back of Furiosa’s head, pulling her down to kiss her forehead. “Of course we came. This is our Furiosa.” 

_Of course we came_.

Seven thousand days are suddenly howling in her ears, every muscle and bone turned as cold and rare as the fog that freezes on the tops of the dunes. There isn’t any air in the room, none at all, and her heart is stuttering hard in her chest like an engine with cracking pistons. She is choking and desperately trying to pretend she isn’t.

_Of course we came._

_Of course_. 

As if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As if she’s a fool for doubting. 

“What do you want?” Toasts breaks in, pulling at everyone’s attention with the net of her voice. “Are you here to trade?”

The Rock Rider leader looks at his compatriot.

“You’ve got debts here,” Maadi says. “You agreed to come negotiate. You may talk through us if it’s easier.” 

“Never easy,” grumbles the shorter Rider. “Didn’t want to come.”

Furiosa is clawing her way back into herself. Distantly, Val squeezes her shoulder in a gentle question, and it’s like an airbrake has just been activated, the pressure draining away as her heart shudders back to a rhythmic beat.

Maadi is looking at her expectantly; beside her, Mari’s eyes are too sharp and knowing. “There’s a spring in the canyons,” Maadi says. “Storm clogged it.” She nods to the Rider leader. “He says it can be dug out again, but not on the supplies they have right now.”

Toast frowns. “The storm damaged us as well. Our own repairs take priority.”

The Rock Rider leader grabs at his compatriot as they lurch forward. “You broke the deal, you _owe_ us-”

“ _You_ broke the deal,” Furiosa snaps back. “I had the guzzoline. You just needed to blow the pass-”

“And get three war parties on our arse for our trouble-”

“Enough,” Capable interjects firmly. “You brought our people to us. We owe you for that, at least.” More calmly, she continues. “I’m called Capable. I’m willing to negotiate on behalf of the Citadel, but only if I know who I’m speaking with.”

The two Riders are silent a moment, the shorter one still trembling with the urge to fight. “Fine,” says the leader, after a pause. “We will negotiate, but _only_ -” he stabs a finger at Capable, “-with you.”

Val’s fingers tighten in victory on Furiosa’s arm, and slowly, Furiosa starts to breathe.


	122. Chapter 122

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's been so long. It's been a rough couple of months, but I changed my medication, which seems to be helping me get back to normal. In terms of this fic, rest assured I am committed to following through. I have the last chapters all plotted out, and a decent chunk of them written. Come hell or high water, L&B _will_ be completed - I owe it to myself, and also to all of you who've supported this crazy fic for so long. 
> 
> In the meantime, I'll be camping with Clan of the Boltcutter at Wasteland Weekend at the end of September, so if you're there, come find me! I'd love to say hi. :-D

Furiosa is not a gentle person. Capable knows this. She’d known it in the Vault in an instant; it’s something that goes deeper than normal human sense. She’d felt a protective blaze of anger when Furiosa had glanced down at Angharad’s leg and muttered, “Out here, everything hurts,” but now, she understands that wasn’t an admonishment - it was as close to tenderness as Furiosa could ever come. It was an acknowledgement of shared pain, a statement of purpose. 

It was, in a way, a call to arms. 

Even so, Capable hadn’t truly understood, until the moment she’d seen Furiosa take a knife to the side and then crawl across two moving vehicles to send Joe’s face spinning away from his body. 

Furiosa is holding herself the same way right now, her human knuckles white against a fist of Valkyrie’s shirt. She is upright through equal parts fury and determination, only the bubbling set of her jaw an indication of how she’s reeling with shock. Even half a year before, Capable wouldn’t have noticed; Furiosa has built herself into an almost impenetrable walled fortress, but Capable is slowly becoming an expert at seeing the cracks between the stones. 

There are more and more cracks these days. 

The lead Rock Rider takes off his helmet. He’s younger than Capable might have guessed, closer to her own age than Furiosa’s, his dark skin mottled with stark patches of white. “Raygear,” he says, knocking a fist against his sternum for emphasis. He indicates the androgynous person at his side. “My sister, Wilgee. Anything you say to me, you say to both of us.” There’s a strong family resemblance between the two: the same sharp brown eyes, the same blunt, wide features; siblings, then, close enough to even share both parents. 

In the shadows of the garage, the other Riders take their cue from their leaders, and remove their helmets, headdresses of net and fluttering cloth coming away to reveal a clan that is thin and ragged. They hold their helmets close, looking around with the unease of the uncomfortably naked. “Ray, what you want us doin’?” one pipes up. 

“We don’t have much for repairs, but we have tools,” Capable says, and sees Keno nod. “You’re welcome to borrow what you need.”

“We’ve got a decent medical setup, too, if you need attention,” Mari announces, and that turns more than a few heads. She gives Maadi a gentle squeeze with one arm, reaching over to snag Tamar’s hand with the other. “You took care of my family, and for that, I am in your debt.”

“Debts?” snarls Wilgee. “Pfah. Seventeen dead-”

“We’re _talking_ ,” Raygear interrupts, silencing his sibling with a sharp glance. He eyes Mari thoughtfully. “Got more than one as needs a proper doc. You take a look at ‘em, we talk.”

The Riders are reluctant to leave their bikes, so a compromise is made: Raygear and Wilgee will go meet with the Council to discuss the situation, and Mari and Cheedo will bring what medical supplies they need to the garage. 

Getting the Council together takes a little more maneuvering. Valkyrie takes one look at the long flight of stairs up to the catwalks and immediately shakes her head. “Not even Mari can work a miracle like that,” she mutters, and slips her arm over Tamar’s waiting shoulders. “Guess I’m staying here.”

“I’ll go,” says Maadi. “Can’t say I’m much better on stairs these days, but I can at least try, eh?”

Furiosa is hesitating, a halting stiffness in her shoulders. “Someone should be on watch,” Amy interjects, catching Capable’s eye. “Furi, you’re the best shot.”

Without protesting, Joe’s former Imperator takes the offered rifle and slings it over her shoulder, turning to go. Capable thinks of the moment in the dunes, when all of Furiosa’s grief came boiling out, and wonders what the form this new storm will take. 

“Furiosa,” Valkyrie calls quietly, and she turns. “It’s good to see you well.”

Capable has seen women look less trapped behind the Vault’s steel door. “I have to go,” Furiosa rasps, and then she’s up the stairs, into the darkness like a shadow.

Valkyrie scowls, and Mari pats her shoulder. “Leave it for a moment, love,” the older woman murmurs. “It’s been difficult for everyone. We can talk later.” She puts a weathered palm on Val’s cheek, kissing Tamar’s temple at the same time. “We are all overjoyed to see you girls back with us.”

Valkyrie does not look convinced. 

The discussion with the Riders is less fraught than Capable expects. Wilgee fumes and glowers, her eyes the thick green of dark algae. “I will not negotiate on the guzzoline owed to us,” Raygear says to the assembled Council, “but for the moment we are at the mercy of your hospitality.”

Capable thinks of Angharad, of that awful, slow-motion fall. If the Riders had blown the pass when Furiosa asked, maybe-

She shakes herself. Miss Giddy had always cautioned against second-guessing the past, and she can’t afford to let the deep ache in her chest distract her. “The storm left us damaged,” Capable says. “I’ll be blunt: we do not have the guzzoline we owe.” Wilgee makes an indignant noise, but Capable soldiers on. “We trade our water to Gastown in return for guzzoline. Right now, we only have enough left for the next trade run.” She leans forward, bracing herself against the table. “In the interest of full disclosure, the system that powers our water pumps was damaged in the storm.” She glances over at Keno. “Are we still thinking four days before we’re up to three pumps again?”

He scrubs a hand across his face. His paint is dirty with sweat and grease, hastily-applied new layers starting to flake away from the old. She wants to wash him, to run a damp cloth across his back until the rich darkness of his skin shines like oiled metal. “Only if we don’t bust another transmission,” he says. “Half the metal’s rotten up there.”

Maadi nods knowingly. “Salt kills it all,” she mutters. “Green or metal, it all dies.”

“Doesn’t help us,” Wilgee interrupts. “You owe us. We’re here to collect.”

In a perfect world, the windmills could be easily fixed from scrap, and the pumps would obligingly chug to full power, robust as the full-life engineers that once oversaw their construction. Furiosa would take the rig to Gastown, exchange water for fuel, and the Rock Riders would take their payment, perhaps even with some semblance of amity. 

In a perfect world, Angharad would preside over this meeting, regal as a queen and ruthless as the wind that scours the barren landscape outside. Capable tries to think of what Angharad would say, taking a breath and letting the action elongate her spine. “We all owe debts,” she says evenly. “But right now, this is our reality: at this moment, we can’t pay you, not in guzzoline, not in water. You can either stay and help us rebuild, and we can negotiate additional payment, or you are welcome to try your luck with Gastown.” 

“Gastown gets its water from you,” Raygear says, eyes narrowed. 

“Their fresh water, yes.” 

“You would offer us death,” Wilgee spits. “We will drink your _blood_ -”

Toast calmly places her pistol on the table, the tiny, palm-sized weapon she’s carried since their flight in the War Rig. “You would die.”

“You _owe_ us-”

“We’re offering you salvation,” Capable interrupts. “We’re not saying we won’t pay. We’re not saying we don’t owe you. We’re saying that right now, you need water, and we have some. We will give it to you. We just need some time.”

Wilgee bares her teeth, startlingly white and even against the dusty darkness of her skin. “You want time? You want _time_? The dead get no fucking time, not one extra hour, and you’re them that killed our blood-”

There’s something in her face, in the way her fists clench that Capable suddenly recognizes. It comes as a sharp stab in her belly, the memory of the shocked and breathless ache as Joe’s malformed tissue lay curled in a pool of its own effluvia in her bed. Anger blooms, anger at the Rock Riders for their stubbornness, at Joe for his pursuit, at Furiosa - irrationally - for somehow not protecting Angharad. “You made a deal, and you broke it,” Capable says coldly. “You think you’re the only ones who lost people? If you’d blown the pass when Furiosa said, Joe wouldn’t have gotten to us. Your child would still be alive, and so would ours.” 

Wilgee rears back as if slapped, and Raygear looks dumbfounded. “How did you-”

“I lost my _sister_ ,” Capable snaps. There’s a dense coal of pain she’s kept buried beneath her heart since that awful moment Angharad slipped out of her grasp, and it flares with every heartbeat, every breath fanning it like a bellows.“Her child wasn’t even born. Angharad died protecting us from _your_ mistake, and now you come to us demanding payment. Explain to me right now why _we_ shouldn’t be demanding payment from you. Explain to me why _we_ shouldn’t just throw you off the lift and be done.”

“We brought your women-” Raygear tries. 

“You brought them because you thought you could use them as leverage against Furiosa,” Capable interrupts. “You saved them because you knew they were with us, and you thought you could use human lives as extortion.” The fury is thick in her throat, and she suddenly understands that moment they found Furiosa covered in blood in the Vault. “We are not _things_ ,” she spits out. “Joe treated us as property, and he was torn to shreds. You were afraid of three war parties? We _broke_ them. You can either negotiate with us, or face the consequences.”

The room is painfully silent, the two Rock Riders stunned. Nakmin is a sickly shade of green, Keno’s eyes are huge, and Jilly is nodding thoughtfully. Toast has a knowing smirk, and Max - Max looks oddly proud. 

“We will share our food, our water and our medical supplies,” Capable says, more quietly. “When we have our pumps working, we will trade with Gastown to get you the guzzoline we owe. If you help us with our pumps, we will supply you with as much water as you can carry, and we can discuss what supplies you need to repair your own spring.” She glances at Maadi, then back to Raygear and Wilgee. “We’re grateful to have our mothers back among us, but do not mistake that gratitude for weakness.”

The siblings share a tense moment of unspoken communication, and then some of the fight seems to go out of Wilgee’s body. She spits on the ground, and scowls. “We’re refugees,” Raygear acknowledges. “The past is bloody, and we all got wounds still bleeding.” He shakes his head. “Got no choice, do we? Your scav said we’d find trade, and so we’re here. We agree to what you say, but I’ll say this: my people stay together. Furiosa stays away. I won’t speak for them seeking revenge.”

“Agreed.” Furiosa has already gone deep into her shell, retreating in shock; Capable thinks they’ll be hard-pressed to find her at all. She catches Max’s eye, and he gives an infinitesimal nod. He’ll be the go-between, if one is needed. 

Somehow, it doesn’t hurt this time, knowing that someone else can reach Furiosa when Capable herself cannot. She squares her shoulders, and looks to their uncertain allies. “Welcome to the Citadel, then. Let’s get to work.”


	123. Chapter 123

Those with the sharpest eyes are usually the youngest, corneas undamaged by the harsh sun and the passage of time. Under Joe’s rule, each lookout post would be manned by three or four Pups, usually under the supervision of a War Boy too injured or sick to make war. Post-Joe, there are far too few War Boys to waste on lookout duties, so the Milkers stepped in, grateful for the wind in their faces and the chance to stretch their limbs and stare into the endless waste. 

Everything that was Joe is slowly being eroded. The prohibition against “soft” living is gone; the bare lookout perch at the top of the tallest tower has been improved, a canopy of heavy leather shading the watchers from the blistering sun. One Milker sits on an improvised bench, braiding the hair of her sister surveying the horizon. 

“Boltcutter,” the braider says as Furiosa approaches. Both women smile in greeting, and Furiosa forces frozen muscles into an appropriate expression. 

The title is meant to be respectful, but to be called Imperator once meant respect, too. The air is already too heavy on her skin, and the words dig in like sharp burrs. She’d had too many names, too many hands grabbing at her body. She is as thin as sun-rotted cloth, fraying and torn. The next gust will rip her utterly asunder. 

“Boss!” one of the Pups chimes in. “Was it really Rock Riders? This far in?” The Pups scramble around her, young faces glowing white from the protective paint, young eyes burning with the possibility of adventure and gossip. 

“Trade,” she makes herself say. “Just trade.”

One of the Milkers frowns. “But from so far?”

Her throat is already swollen and hot from swallowing back things she’d rather not name, and she’s afraid if she opens her mouth to talk, she will start screaming. Her chest feels like an empty barrel, a vacuum formed in hard metal. It feels like she’s trying to breathe in the deepest heart of a hurricane, the air pulled from her lungs by the raging storm. 

“Ask Capable,” she grunts, but even that’s a betrayal, pushing the responsibility onto someone else when she should be shouldering it herself. “Now we watch.”

Furiosa settles herself into the sniper’s perch, tugging the shade cloth over her body. The Pups bob around the edges of her vision, shadows gradually retreating as they settle back into the lookout tent. 

Val is alive. _Val is alive_. Val, with crow feathers at her pauldrons, Val with a cloud of dark hair, Val with dancing eyes and freckled skin. 

Val, looking at the stairs and shaking her head with resigned pain. 

Val had gone under the wheels - _she went under the wheels_ -

How had Val come back, and not Angharad-

Maybe _Angharad_ was still-

Max said Angharad was gone. Max didn’t say Val was not. He knew about Angharad. He didn’t know about Val. Did he? Did he really? Or had he just been so desperate to escape, he’d have said anything to keep them moving? And later, had he been so desperate to somehow protect Furiosa that he’d have lied to keep her at the Citadel?

He doesn’t need to protect her. He shouldn’t _want_ to protect her, not when there’s so much blood on her hands. 

He’s mad. He went into the Waste and went mad, and then he was captured and made more mad. He’s always been mad. Max is mad, utterly and completely, and Furiosa is so far gone herself that she’s let herself be drawn into the fever dreams of his world. 

Max the Mad and Furiosa the Imperator, together bloodier than a Wasteland sunset. 

Val...Val doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what Furiosa has done, what she’s become. In that brief span of hours out in the dunes, the day she’d brought the girls to the Vuvalini and then sent the Vuvalini to their deaths - Furiosa couldn’t find the words to tell her. Now, Valkyrie is _here_ , here at the Citadel, the burning, bleeding heart of everything Furiosa helped build and then tear down. Val, so tall and proud and every inch a warrior, a queen from the stories their mothers used to tell. 

Val, who never sent her mothers to their deaths, who went down with her weapon up and her head high.

Furiosa let her enemies take her, let them put themselves inside of her and use her body to further their aims. She became the bullet she was too terrified to face. 

_Of course we came._

_Of course we came._

She didn’t know they would come. It never even crossed her mind. Was that a betrayal of their faith in her? Is she so out of touch with the roots of her past that doubting her mothers, the ones who bled and died for her, has become second nature?

_This is our Furiosa._

She isn’t their Furiosa. Their Furiosa was a stubborn adolescent with grease-black fingers, the outspoken daughter of Mary Jobassa. Their Furiosa kissed the rain from Valkyrie’s tan face, both of them slick as fish in the waters of the Green Place. 

Their Furiosa died somewhere, lost amid seven thousand days of gritted teeth and drifting sand. She is a different Furiosa, one who seeks solace in the arms of a mad man and fills her mouth with the blood of others. 

The shudder feels like an earthquake, and Furiosa numbly clutches at the rifle in her hands. In the scope, the desert dissolves into a bright and tangled blur.


	124. Chapter 124

He finds her later, after sunset, when the Wasteland has gone bruise-colored and dark. She’s drawn the shade cloth close around her shoulders, her body-shaped indentation in the sand still radiating a bit of the day’s scant warmth. The days are getting longer, progressively warmer, and it won’t be long before the air becomes thick with stifling summer heat. 

Max makes his approach known, scuffing just enough that she doesn’t startle. “Got this,” she hears him murmur to the former kitchen worker dozing in the lookout tent, and there’s the soft pat of retreating footsteps. 

Furiosa lets him stand there for a few long minutes, pretending to be absorbing in scanning the horizon through her scope. There’s almost nothing to see, just the glittering towers of the Gastown refineries rising above the haze of dusk. The Bullet Farm is a dark shadow in the distance, a malevolent hole against the purple hills. 

They’re running out of time. Whatever happened at the Bullet Farm - whatever Max did, the actions that are hidden in his deafening silence - it was only temporary. The Bullet Farm presses into her skull like a growing tumor, a rising migraine that she can’t press away. The sudden appearance of the Rock Riders, the lost Vuvalini - _Val_ \- 

Max fidgets with one of the buckles on his jacket, a series of nervous metal clicks.

Wordlessly, she rolls just enough to let him under the shade cloth, and he extinguishes the cranklight, dropping down on his belly beside her.

He’s keeping himself from touching her, but he’s still close enough that Furiosa can feel the heat from his body. The smell of him hits hard in her chest, and she is twin engines of exhausted anger and tearful want, revving up with a furious need. It feels like it’s been a thousand days since she lost herself in his body, and the distance between them is shrilly demanding resolution. 

Her human hand clenches hard around the rifle. “Please,” she growls. “Tell me again you didn’t know.”

The whites of his eyes glint in the darkness, like the flash of a distant scope. “Met me on the flats. Never, mm, never went up to the camp, just traded and went off.”

“What did you trade?”

He twitches. “The bike.” It wasn’t his to trade, and they both know it, but she lets that knowledge hang like dust in the air. “Needed tools. Needed, mm. The car.”

The Rock Riders would have had no claim on Max’s car beyond what fuel they could scavenge. The bike, though - that was a rich trade, a huge gift to people whose domain was rocky hills and impassable cliffs. Long association tells Furiosa they wouldn’t have shot at him without reason; if they’d investigated him at all, it was because they wanted to see if he could defend himself, if the bike was worth attacking for. If he’d thought they’d laid claim to the battered hulk of his car, and then offered the bike in exchange, no wonder they’d been willing to deal with him. They’d probably thought him a complete idiot. “You didn’t see anything.” 

He shakes his head. “Wasn’t at the camp, was just there for the car. Wasn’t looking for, mm.”

Survivors. He hadn’t seen any because he hadn’t expected any. 

Furiosa swallows hard on a hot swell of bile. “You would have said something,” she hears herself say, in a voice that is so plaintive it’s almost unrecognizable as her own. “Right? You would have-” 

His mouth moves, but no words come out. She understands anyway. He can’t say that he would have, because day to day, he doesn’t always have control. She knows. She’s _seen_. She’d pulled herself out of the sand and shouted until her lungs ached, but he’d still rocketed away into the distance. 

But...by not promising her, he isn’t lying. Somehow, he’s never lied to her. The truth is ugly and raw and ragged, but so is she; so are they both. When his words have failed, he’s tried to speak through his actions. 

His blood runs in her veins. The thing that was stolen from him, the thing he was stolen _for_ is the very thing he’d volunteered to give her. 

He has to be mad, but she’s tied to him just as surely as an engine is tied to the drive train. 

She presses her face into his shoulder, inhaling in the dust and soot and grease ground into his skin. She’s breathing hard, but she’s as dry as a desiccated corpse, bled of tears hours ago. 

“Riders gonna stay awhile,” Max mumbles into her hair. “Tough sell, but Capable, mm. Didn’t back down.”

“Bullet Farm?”

“Don’t know. You see anything?”

“Nothing.”

He makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat, and she lets him take the gun. He peers into the scope, and she lets her head drop back to his shoulder, suddenly bonelessly tired. 

It’s too much. Everything is too much. Her body is singing with his closeness, embers flaring to life beneath her skin, but there’s Val - Val is _alive_ , and what about Val, what about the closeness they once shared? It aches like an abscessed tooth, but she doesn’t dare probe, doesn’t dare even _think_ beyond her next breath. Hope is a mistake, and there is a wild storm in her chest, a stolen future impossibly tangled with a distant past. 

“Gonna have to move,” Max mutters. “This Blood won’t wait.”

Blood never waits. It courses through her veins and sears her from the inside out. It thunders in her ears and shudders in her chest, and she can feel every heartbeat like a drum in her throat. “When?”

He shrugs. 

The headache rises sharply, a hot wave of frustration and fury surging up from her core. “How can we not _know_ -”

It’s the Bullet Farm. It’s the Rock Riders. It’s Valkyrie and Maadi and Tamar, limping in from the world beyond. It’s the broken windmills, the maddeningly slow trickle of water and the orange haze of dust still lazily drifting through the air. It’s Gastown. It’s the broken vehicles and the Buzzards, and her own tires spinning uselessly no matter what gear she tries. 

“Hey,” Max whispers, his hands in her hair and his breath warm on her lips. “Hey. Hey.”

Something breaks, and then they’re breathing together, their lungs piston chambers for a single engine. In less than a heartbeat, he’s fumbling with the straps of her prosthetic, her human hand delving into the downy softness below his belly. 

“Hng- wait. _Wait_ ,” he manages, “...you okay? Is this-”

“Fool,” she snarls, and catches his lower lip in her teeth. 

Anyone else would be scared, but Max...if Max is mad, then she is just as mad, and somehow, he’s recognized that part of himself in her. All hesitation is lost, the shade cloth shoved aside. His mouth drops to her breast, his fingers hungrily seeking out slick warmth, but she is far past the point of patience. 

He’s trying to be gentle, but she is aching and wavering on the edge of implosion. “Now, fool!” she snaps, and mothers, he _grins_ , thrusting inside her, each stroke hot and hard and perfect. 

As the first trembling waves of an orgasm start building in her thighs, she shoves him hard, trapping his hips beneath her own. He whines, bucking against her at the sudden loss of movement. “You’d say,” she growls against the wild pulse at his collarbone. “Tell me you’d say!”

“I’d say!” he gasps, and shudders violently as she clenches around him, a feral roar torn from his throat. 

****

Above them, the sky is black oil, broken only by a bright smear of stars. 

The engineless vehicle moves down the asphalt toward the Citadel, unseen.


	125. Chapter 125

Capable thinks perhaps her heart might burst. 

Dag’s daughter is four days old, still wrinkled and warm. When her skin acquires a hint of yellow, everyone fusses over her, and Mari orders that she be kept in the filtered sunlight of the dome. “Give her a few days,” the old Vuvalini says. “She’s strong. Her little kidneys will figure it out.”

Dag herself is still recovering, chafing from bedrest and boredom, only accepting the infant when the pain in her breasts overwhelms whatever deep ache she feels inside. “She says the baby has Joe’s face,” Cheedo explains in hushed tones. “She says he tore her in half.”

“We’ve got to call her something, pet,” Mari keeps saying, the baby cradled in her arms. 

“What’s the point,” Dag mumbles, picking at a fingernail. “She’s going to die anyway.”

“She’s very healthy,” the old Vuvalini counters, and as if in response, the tiny girl yawns hugely, bright gums and perfect skin unfolding like a flower amid the swaddling. “This one just might make it.”

The baby has spent most of her time cuddled up to the grateful bosom of one of the Milk Mothers, or tucked against Capable’s own chest. The child is new and flawless, and when she settles against the hollow of Capable’s collarbone, the weight of her warm, damp body is like feeling gravity for the first time, comfortable and solid. 

Once, she’d held a baby sister like this, but that girl had been wan and sickly. This one cries with the lusty, indignant fury of a goddess, tiny fists waving in the air at any perceived discomfort. 

Capable has never been so in love.

****

The returned Vuvalini are welcomed with open arms, eagerly embraced by their lost sisters. It’s not quite a party - it can’t be, not when they’re all exhausted from days of hard work and the looming specter of work still undone - but the urgency of the repairs is momentarily overwhelmed by the radiated joy. 

The Rock Riders are reticent, the careful consideration of Raygear poorly meshed with Wilgee’s open hostility. After the accord, Capable joins Mari and Cheedo in the garage to wind fresh bandages against old wounds, and as she works, she watches. Raygear is gentle with his people, always ready with a reassuring touch or bending close to catch a whispered concern. Wilgee galvanizes them, inspecting motorcycles and armor with a critical eye. 

“Chain’s about to bust,” the Rider leader announces, pointing to the offending part. 

The bike’s rider, a skinny adolescent dwarfed by the mane of torn fabric on his helmet, shakes his head. “Naw, I just checked it-”

She grabs his jaw, directing his alarmed attention to the bottom of the bike. “I _said_ , it’s gonna bust. Look at that flake.” 

“But Wil…”

She gives him a hard push toward one of the workbenches and fixes him with an angry glare. “These people say they’ll give us scrap, so you _take_ it, Tanno. Chain breaks while you’re on rocks, you’re a wet smear on the canyon wall.”

By the workbench, Maz holds up a length of chain. “Got this one,” he offers. “Too short for our bikes, but might fit yours?”

The Rider and his matriarch give him a sour look, but the younger boy grudgingly holds out a hand. “Yeah, I guess.”

Five minutes later, Maz and the Rock Rider boy are curled around the bike’s chain assembly and engrossed in maintenance, their differences utterly forgotten. 

Capable allows herself a small smile. 

Once immediate injuries have been attended to, Mari turns her attention to the Vuvalini. Under her brocade patch, Maadi’s eye is a complete loss; the Rider medic had known enough to remove the dying tissue, and there’s only an empty cavity left, half-filled with well-healed tissue. 

“We’ve got some smelting ability,” Mari says gently. “We could make you a glass eye, perhaps?”

Maadi snorts. “Glass? Hell, if it’s gotta be a rock, I want it in _gold_.”

The creases around Mari’s mouth deepen as she examines the hard knot of hairless scar tissue on Tamar’s scalp. “Oh, pet...”

“She’s talking now,” Maadi cuts in, reaching over to put a reassuring hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Sometimes she forgets a word, but it’s much better now. It’s so much better.”

Tamar leans forward into Mari’s embrace. “It’s okay, Auntie. I’m here. It’s okay.”

There’s no mistaking the glitter of tears in Mari’s eyes. 

Capable remembers the awful moment Valkyrie was run down, how the People Eater had revved his engines and taken aim. “You’re not touching me,” the black-haired Vuvalini says sharply. “I don’t need your pity. I’m upright and I can take a piss.”

“Raygear had a bike modified,” Maadi interjects. “All the controls are in the handles.”

“I can still take the horns off a lizard at seventy yards.” Valkyrie frowns, looking around. “Where’s the blonde girl? The one Keep liked so well?”

“Not five days out of childbed,” Mari says. “If you can walk up stairs, we can run some tests-”

“Don’t.” The word is firm, but then Valkyrie relents. “I know you want to help, Auntie, I really do, but some things can’t be fixed. I can walk a bit, and that’s more than anyone thought.” Her eyes are dark and flat, and Capable can suddenly see the months of despair etched into skin. Shaking herself off, Valkyrie cranes her neck toward the hall. “But Furi - is she alright? She’s so thin, and her _eye_ -”

Tamar sits up. “What about her eyes?”

“It’s been a long road for everyone,” Mari says quietly, and Capable’s heart constricts with a fierce, protective ache. 

****

A thin soup is passed around, a broth of lizard and witchetty augmented with handfuls of dense millet crackers. A few Riders dig into their pack and share various jerkies, cutting the meat into strips to soak until they’re palatable. 

It’s well after sunset when Keno pulls her aside. “Can we talk?” he mutters. “Got some concerns.”

“Of course.” Capable follows him further into the garage, into a shadowy alcove they usually reserve for more intimate moments. He’s fidgeting like a nervous child, the bright whites of his eyes flicking around. “Is it the repairs? I can renegotiate-”

“En’t that, no, no.” He takes a breath. He still hasn’t bathed or reapplied the white paint, and she can see the dust and grease caked around the hard nodules under his ear. “Just...Riders en’t ours, not before. Maybe we’ve got an agreement now, but it’s a hard thing for some of us, seeing the enemy in our garage, eating our food.”

Her heart sinks. “Look,” she starts earnestly, “just because there’s bad blood doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. They need us, and we need bodies. They can help-”

Keno shakes his head, lips twitching in amusement. “Don’t be Speaker for the Council to me, I don’t need it. It’s me. I trust you. I don’t like it, but I’ll keep working. Just…” He frowns. “Some of the War Boys are angry. Ello’s got a handle on it, but I wanted you to know.” He reaches over and takes her head in both hands, as gently as if he’s cradling a fresh egg. “You’ve gotta be careful. You know that, but I needed to say it.”

“Are they angry that the Rock Riders are here, or are they angry because we’re not allying with Gastown?” She’s heard the rumblings; they’re hard to ignore. 

“Both.” He glances around. “Ello’s got the brakes on, but that’s not saying he doesn’t think so either. He’ll do what Toast tells him, and the others will, too, but you have to get them turned around.”

“I’ll talk with Ello,” she promises. “If he thinks it’s wise, I’ll talk to them individually, so it doesn’t seem like a confrontation.”

“Be the grease,” Keno says fondly, and their mouths meet as she pulls him deeper into the shadows.


	126. Chapter 126

Valkyrie adamantly declares she won’t take the stairs, so after a lengthy debate about whether or not to drag Dag out of her self-imposed exile, Cheedo and Toast finally bring blankets and cushions into the garage, settling into what has become the Vuvalini corner. The Riders have established their own area, bringing out tiny stoves made from rusty cans to warm themselves from the evening chill. 

“Rocket stoves,” Mari says fondly. She nudges Maadi’s shoulder. “We could have used one of those out on the dunes.”

“Used it and what twigs?” Amy snorts. “Nothing to burn but fuel, and the little gas burner still works just fine, thanks.”

Cheedo frowns. “Miss Giddy told us about rockets. Is that how they flew?”

Capable makes a mental note to get the plans for rocket stoves from the Rock Riders. There isn’t much fuel down in the Wretched camps either, and the Riders’ little units seem much more efficient. 

Assuming, of course, that a day will come when the Citadel isn’t using every spare piece of scrap metal to patch damaged equipment. After a few sweet moments, Keno had regretfully pulled away from her, leading his third-shift repair crew back up to the windmills to work by cranklight. 

There’s no moon, but Furiosa and Max come down from the lookout tower hours long after sunset, wearing suspiciously mirrored dust patches. Max floats behind her like a dazed fly, seemingly oblivious to her troubled expression. 

“Furiosa, Max,” Capable tries. “There’s still soup. Come eat.”

“Max,” Maadi says thoughtfully. “Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed that.”

Amy chuckles. “The reliable Fool.”

“They’re _together_ ,” Cheedo whispers, leaning in eagerly, but Toast interrupts her salacious delight with an elbow to the stomach, hissing, “Don’t be a gossip!”

“I’m just _saying_ -”

“Yeah, and _I’m_ saying _don’t_.”

Cheedo pouts a little, wilting under Mari’s warning glance. Valkyrie chews pensively on a cracker, and Capable suddenly remembers how she’d been the first one to embrace Furiosa, how she hadn’t questioned Furiosa’s identity when the others had. Despite seven thousand days, Valkyrie had known instantly, without hesitation. 

Capable wonders what she sees. Furiosa considers herself with a painfully harsh eye, and it might help to have more people around who love her. Assuming, that is, that Valkyrie can get any closer than Capable has. Furiosa herself is still hanging back, one eye on the Riders, her lips a thin line of unease. 

Always ready for a meal, Max edges close and accepts a bowl of the now-cold soup, squatting a few feet away to bolt his food like a feral. Furiosa shakes her head at Capable’s offer, but relents when Max pointedly offers a millet cracker

“Come sit with us,” Maadi entreats. “Furiosa, it’s been so long. The girls have been telling us all you’ve accomplished.”

The urge to intervene crawls up Capable’s throat. This should be a joyous reunion, Furiosa’s lost family brought together again, but somehow, it isn’t. The Vuvalini are looking expectantly at their wayward daughter, and Furiosa’s face is carefully blank, her body language screaming that she’d rather be anywhere else. 

“Come!” Tamar motions with her hands, scooting to make a place among the blankets. “Please!”

“We’ve been worried,” Valkyrie says quietly. “We didn’t know if you’d made it, if any of you still lived.”

“We’d hoped,” adds Maadi. “We always hoped.”

Furiosa is almost impossible to parse, and that’s part of the reason Capable feels so drawn to her. She’s a conundrum, the mysterious Bag of Nails, and in the months since the revolution, every little bit Capable has been able to tease out has only left her wanting more. The same hunger glows in Valkyrie’s eyes, a pungent mix of hope and concern. 

“It’s not safe,” Furiosa says flatly. “Anyone could have seen the Rock Riders approach. I need to be on watch.”

“Others can watch,” Capable points out. “And it’s pitch dark - if there’s a convoy coming-”

“My ears still work,” Furiosa snaps.

“Ello’s got watch tonight,” Toast interjects. “If it were Sito or Target, then yeah, I’d be worried. But Ello’s got good ears, and he’s not one to sleep through his shift.”

“I _need_ to be up there.” This time, there’s just the barest hitch in Furiosa’s voice, and Capable suddenly understands: she doesn’t want the others to see her nightmares. In the dunes, they’d caught only a few hours of sleep, and even then, Furiosa had volunteered to stay up. She’d perched on top of the War Rig staring into the distance, and only later crawled into the rear lookout, far away from where the others were huddled together against the nighttime chill. 

Now that she thinks about it, Max had done the same thing, putting the Rig between him and anyone who might have witnessed. 

“Ello is good,” Capable acknowledges, “but the Buzzards might have followed the Riders. Furiosa, how many people do you want on watch?”

Something very like relief flickers across the former Imperator’s face. 

“It’s _dark_ ,” Cheedo protests. “By the time you hear them, they’ll already be here. Please, just come sit.”

“The scavengers prefer darkness.” Raygear ambles over, a cup of something pungent clutched in his gloveless hands. “Close quarters,” he says by way of apology. “But they got night vision.”

“Night vision,” echoes Toast. “Like, they can see in the dark?”

Mari frowns. “Actual night vision? Where’d they get that tech?”

“Wherever they’ve been getting their munitions lately,” mutters Amy. 

The Rock Rider shakes his head. “Had them in our territory, maybe fifty days back? Usually don’t come that far, but they came.”

“G’wan, give up our secrets!” Wilgee snaps at him across the garage, teeth bared. “Roll like a lizard and tell ‘em everything.”

“Scavs have been well-armed,” Raygear continues, ignoring his sister. “Spiked cars can’t climb like bikes, so we’ve been okay, but we got into a scrap, ended up taking one of their little ones.”

Capable feels a sharp stab of alarm. “Little ones?” There are no children with the Rock Riders, at least none that she has seen. 

He outlines the shape of a dome with his hands. “Their smaller cars, the ones that are shaped like hide beetles.”

Oh. Not children, then.

“Scouts,” Toast agrees. “You got one?”

He shrugs. “It got itself; went too close to the edge, down it fell. They left it - didn’t scavenge, just drove off.”

“But you went to check it,” Amy says, and it’s not a question. 

Raygear nods. “Nothing to scrap, not from that far down in the canyon, but we dropped Laggertee down there just to look.” He indicates one of the smaller, scrawnier Riders. “The bodies had really good tech.” He fishes around in the large leather pouch at his waist, bringing out an object carefully wrapped in cloth. “Like this.”

Amy accepts the object, gently pulling back its wrap. She makes a small noise of disbelief, and looks from Mari to Raygear with incredulous eyes. “It’s...it’s an Armasight! I haven’t seen one of these in forty years!” She cradles it reverently in her hands, turning from one side to the other. 

It’s a gun sight; Capable recognizes it as the cousin to the one Furiosa has on her rifle. Its oil-bright lens is shattered, the housing crushed in a sudden, violent impact, but otherwise it’s impossibly sleek, the dark plastic gleaming like damp stone. It looks impossibly powerful and immeasurably rare. 

“There’s no wear,” Mari says, abruptly swinging her head around. “It was new.”

“Old,” counters Maadi, frowning. “Can’t be new. There isn’t tech like that anymore.”

Amy raises the sight to her nose, breathing as deeply as if she’s scenting a fresh melon. “Old,” she agrees, “but it could have worked. I don’t smell any battery corrosion.”

Furiosa has been hanging on the edge of the conversation, her whole body a tensely coiled spring for the moment their new allies become a threat, but at Amy’s proclamation she rears back. “Get rid of it. Destroy it. Throw it in a fire. Just - it needs to be gone.”

“It’s _mine_ ,” Raygear snaps. “I’ll say if it stays or goes.”

“We could try and fix it,” Toast says hopefully, “maybe use it-”

“ _Gone_ ,” Furiosa repeats, and she is suddenly the Bag of Nails, her eyes gone black with intent and steel. Out of nowhere, there’s a pistol in her hand, and it’s pointed straight at Raygear’s head.


	127. Chapter 127

Chaos erupts. Max yelps and drops his bowl, ceramic exploding at their feet as both he and Capable unthinkingly insert themselves between Furiosa and Raygear. Wilgee and the other Riders are there in an instant, weapons drawn and safeties off, and the Vuvalini are up and flanking Furiosa, two passing Repair Boys materializing as backup. 

“I’ll blow your fucking head off-” Wilgee’s screaming, but Mari crooks two fingers near her lips and blows the most earsplitting whistle Capable has ever heard. The room is abruptly silent, the tension thick in the air. 

“Enough!” Mari bellows. “No one is shooting anyone! Put your weapons up.”

“Not until she does!” growls Wilgee. Her stubby shotgun is a hairsbreadth from Furiosa’s temple. 

“It goes,” Furiosa says firmly. “Destroy it, or I will.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s a scope, girl” Amy snaps. “It’s not a bomb. No different than the one you’ve got on that great rifle of yours.”

“You said it could see in the dark!” interjects Toast. “That could be so useful!”

“Capable. Move.” It’s not a request. There’s a strange hardness in Furiosa’s eyes, one that she doesn’t recognize.

Capable forces herself to breathe, to swallow back the wild hammer of her pulse. “Tell me why,” she says evenly. 

“If you don’t move, I’ll shoot both of you.”

Cheedo gasps into her palms, and Toast is incredulous. “It’s a fucking _scope_ -” 

“Kill me and you’ll never know peace,” Raygear warns. 

“Talk to me,” Capable entreats. “Why should it go?”

Wilgee rolls her eyes. “It en’t _hers_ -”

“Did she say scope?” The Repair Boys glance at each other, and only then does Capable realize it’s Maz and one of the younger boys, both hidden by a fresh coat of paint.

“Not _just_ a scope,” snaps Amy. “It’s a night vision scope. Lets you see in the dark. Worth its weight in gold.”

The Boys look to Furiosa, and Maz says slowly, “That’s forbidden tech, right, Boss?”

Amy is livid. “ _Forbidden tech_? Is that why this place is built from string and wire? Why all these boys have lumps?? Why the _fuck_ -”

A sudden surge of understanding breaks over her body with a chill. Capable is one of two people in this room who understand the full might of Joe’s power - and just as importantly, the strength of his punishment. “Furiosa,” she says quietly. “Joe isn’t here. His rules are gone.”

There’s a flicker in the former Imperator’s gaze, but her pistol never wavers. “Move. Now.”

“You were an Imperator,” Capable continues. “You were in charge of enforcing the rules. Things have changed, and you’ve helped with that. Why is this an issue now?”

“Thought we were smuggling.” Wilgee sneers, her lips curling around the words. “Thought we’d come to infect your precious towers, maybe arm your enemies? Can’t see in the dark, can’t see Mister Death when he comes to claim your sorry hide-”

“Wait,” says Toast, frowning, “is that what’s going on here? Furi, it’s fine-” 

“En’t for trade,” Raygear snaps. “Not with you lot. We’ve got our agreement.”

Max moves slowly, telegraphing his intentions with the deep wariness of someone very familiar with the inevitable backlash. Very carefully, he leans toward her. “It’s, mmm, been a long day,” he mutters, and although Capable’s close enough to see the sheen of sweat on Furiosa’s forehead, she almost doesn’t hear his words. “Maybe...stand down and, mm, talk it out later?”

The muscles in Furiosa’s jaw ripple in indecision. 

“You’re the enforcer,” Max continues. “But, mm. Nothing to enforce, right? Unless there is?”

“Maz,” Capable says, “if someone had forbidden tech, what would happen?”

He swallows visibly. “It - I only saw it once. It wasn’t even working, just a small square. Hard like metal, but green - and _shine_. So shine! And - he wasn’t more than a Pup, not really-”

Furiosa doesn’t take her eyes off Raygear. “Maz. Enough.” 

He twitches at her tone, but soldiers on. “Boss, you said! You said it was different, and it _is!_ ”

“What would happen?” Capable repeats. 

The Repair Boy rolls his eyes to the ceiling, chewing on his lip. “Stones,” he finally says. “Imperator put him on the lift, and if we didn’t - we had to _hit_ him, had to, and this other Boy wouldn’t, just kept _missing_ -”

“Maz!” Furiosa snaps. 

“ _No!_ ” The word comes boiling out of him, and he throws his wrench on the ground. “She asked! She asked and I’m not a _thing_ , I’m gonna answer!” He’s shaking, terrified but standing firm, and the younger Boy at his side is silent and aghast. “Boss, you’re good with us, and we made sure you never had any cause, but she asked, and I’m gonna tell.”

“They made you stone this boy?” Mari says quietly. “For having a piece of circuit board?”

Wilgee wrinkles her nose. “Bit of decoration, that’s all that is. Might be hot, but once your fingers melt, then you’d know.”

“The medical equipment has parts like that,” Cheedo points out. “Bright green inside.” She lifts her chin, daring contradiction. “We need that equipment.”

“Scope’s not medical,” Toast counters. “It’s a weapon.”

“En’t got the patience to hold this gun up much longer,” Wilgee snaps, exasperated. She shoots a dark look at Maadi. “Might be your blood, gubba, but we know her for what she is.”

“She’s my sister,” Valkyrie snaps back. “If she’s holding a gun to his head, she’s got a damn good reason!”

Wilgee snorts. “Reason. Pfah.”

“Got our attention, Imperator,” Raygear says. Despite the pistol in his face, he’s unafraid; if anything, he’s furious, his eyes flat and black and utterly ready for murder. 

Furiosa’s nostrils flare. “It goes. Now.”

“Furiosa,” Capable tries again. “We made a deal with them. The scope is theirs. If Raygear agrees to keep it tucked away-”

“Ought to mount it on my hat-” he growls.

“ _If Raygear keeps it tucked away_ ,” she continues, “then it’s not an issue. Surely you can agree with that.”

There’s a moment of tense silence, and then Furiosa abruptly says, “No unnecessary killing.”

It’s over. Furiosa lowers the pistol, and Max quickly takes it from her hands. “Let’s go,” he mutters. “Let’s go now.”

Her expression hasn’t changed, and Capable has a sickening flashback to that day during the siege, when they’d all run in to find a War Boy dead on the floor and Furiosa covered in his blood. All at once, a surge of frustration rises up. Everything they’ve been working for could have ended in this instant, and there isn’t a hint of remorse in Furiosa’s face. She’d have killed Raygear - she’d have killed them all over a chunk of plastic no bigger than Capable’s hand, and now that the immediate danger has passed, the adrenaline is being replaced with bitter regret. 

“Yes, you need to leave,” Capable hears herself say, in a voice that’s cold with anger. “The Citadel has an agreement with the Rock Riders, and they are here as allies.”

“Capable-” Cheedo squeaks. 

“Don’t come back down here,” she tells Furiosa. “As long as the Rock Riders are here, you need to stay away from them. If you need anything from the garage, Keno or Maz will have someone bring it to you. Otherwise, you should be elsewhere.”

“You can’t say that-” Toast bursts out.

Furiosa doesn’t even blink. “It’s done,” she says flatly. 

When she and Max are gone, there’s a long moment, and the Rock Riders start to disband. “Put that one down,” Wilgee advises Capable, acid in her tone. “Rabid dog just bites everyone in the end. Best end it now.”

It doesn’t feel like a victory. It’s just cold, sitting like a stone in her belly.


	128. Chapter 128

Furiosa stands in front of the Vuvalini with the dampness of Max still clinging to her thighs. 

It isn’t safe for her to be in the garage, not with the Rock Riders still eyeing her with their hands straying toward their weapons. She isn’t afraid - she doesn’t even know if she has the capacity to feel fear anymore, not when the shock of seeing her lost tribe is still ringing through her body, the tremble of metal after a collision - but there’s a tired pragmatism in knowing when she should not be part of a conversation. 

Rationally, it’s pragmatism, but it still tastes like a duty she’s shirking. The Riders are dangerous, the Riders are treacherous, and to see Capable casually conversing with them makes her human hand ache to hold a gun. 

“She, mm. Knows what she’s doing,” Max mutters, a solid presence at her back. He’s maintaining a careful separation, the charged line of empty air that develops between them whenever other eyes might see. She wants the simple heat of losing herself in his body, the white roar as they teeter over that raw edge, but there’s Val - there’s _Val_ , sitting between Mari and Tamar, and Capable smiling at something Raygear says.

She doesn’t recognize the object at first. She can’t even really see it, with Raygear’s wide shoulderpads casting a shadow into his hands, but the moment Amy goes stiff and alert, her eyes wide and hungry, Furiosa _knows_. 

By the time she’d been assigned a crew of her own, she’d earned a reputation for reasonable salvage. Certain pieces were forbidden; she was enough of a blackthumb to recognize when a piece was necessary for an engine, and she was smart enough to turn in any questionable items the moment they crossed her palm. As an Imperator, she began to understand the pattern of the Citadel’s self-protection, if not the logic: if it was a weapon or could be used as one, it was probably questionable. It was only after she earned her black scarf that she’d been granted a scope of her own. 

She doesn’t trust the Rock Riders, but they aren’t an immediate threat, at least not when their leader is obviously sharing valuable information with Capable. From Amy’s anguished expression, the scope is obviously broken and useless, but a thrown spark can’t be pulled back, and before she fully understands what’s happening, Furiosa is thrust back into a corner of her own mind, instinct exploding in her veins with the intensity of blown vapor. 

She doesn’t feel the gun in her hand. She is distantly aware of the shouting, how it blooms up like a fireball all around her. 

She doesn’t know how it ends. She just knows there’s a storm roaring in her ears. She is an engine with all eight pistons stuck closed, blazing fire but utterly powerless. Every heartbeat is a thundering blow to her skull, an explosion with nowhere to vent. Max’s hands are pushing her forward, into the hallway and up the stairs, but the pressure of his hands on her skin is excruciating. Every footstep sends a shockwave up her legs; her bones are wood and clay, a dense web of cracks radiating from their core. 

The world is a blaze of smoke and fire, and there isn’t a gasp of air left by the flame. Her lungs are rotted steel, an exhaust system twisting and shredding in her throat. 

“Hey,” Max is saying. “Hey. Stay with me.”

She can’t breathe. Her heart is pounding in her mouth, forced up from its natural position and trapped behind the splintering wall of her clenched teeth. She is steel and glass and iron and sand, the gears of her transmission seized and shearing. 

“Breathe. Just breathe.” He’s still talking, but there is too much pressure, too much heat and noise, and standing still is an even greater agony than the boiling metal surging through her muscles. 

Once upon a time, she might have taken her rifle and calmed herself with target practice, or found someone to spar with, but there are no bullets to spare, and Max is firmly pushing her through the threshold of her room, the latch clanging into place behind him. 

She’s a burning vehicle, her doors jammed shut, her cab filled with billowing ash. It’s pouring out of her ears, the boiling radiator pours down her cheeks and vaporizing on contact. Her vision is starting to tunnel, the black miasmic smoke of flaming rubber swirling around her. Her heart pounds against her teeth, thick and raw and swollen. 

In the dizzying blur of panic, she reaches for her pistol, but it’s gone. The windshield is glass, her skull is glass, her skin is leather that curls and blisters in the heat. If she can shoot, if she can break the glass, if she can-

“No - no, _listen to me_ ,” Max’s voice is almost inaudible over the din, over the mad roar of the firestorm in her head. “Furiosa!”

For a brief, terrible moment, everything is clear. She can see her hand burning, can feel the flames surging up her arm-

As if from a distance, she watches herself destroy the room with a painful, single-minded intensity. The table is overturned, the chair dashed against the floor. Brittle wood explodes into splinters, and with every hit, she can feel just a bit of air leaking back into her lungs. The shard of mirror shatters on the ground. The mattress is heaved out of the alcove, the threadbare fabric catching in her mechanical claw and shredding in a flurry of dust and ancient stuffing. Max watches, balanced on the balls of his feet by the door, ready to either run or intervene, his face a blank page waiting for a final reaction. 

The rage never ends. She doesn’t know where it comes from, or where it will take her. It burns through her fuel lines like poison guzzoline, melting her resistance and her bones. Even when her engine is ash, even when her body is shaking and immune to any command, the rage pours through her like fire. 

All she can do is let rubbery legs crumple like melted struts, dropping her into a pile of rubble of her own making. The weight of phantom steel on her missing arm is excruciating, absent muscles clenched against a threat three thousand days in her past. Numbly, she claws at the buckles, letting her prosthesis clatter to the ground beside her. She’s breathing in great, shuddery gulps, tears and snot mingling with the shredded fabric drifting in the air. 

There is no moon, but the sky outside is already starting to lighten. It’s pale gray, like the delicate strands above Max’s ears. He stands by the door until the cranklight flickers and dies on its hook, and then he’s motionless, a familiar shadow in a ravaged landscape. 

She can’t handle how much she needs him. Even in the dark, it’s somehow easier to breathe just knowing he’s there. 

An interminable time later, he shuffles through the debris and stiffly lowers himself down beside her. His brace creaks as he straightens his leg, his knee making an uncomfortably loud pop in the silence. They sit there in the darkness, propped up on the lumpy ruins of the mattress, their shoulders barely touching. 

He doesn’t ask if she’s okay. She doesn’t know what she’d say if he did. The Citadel is only barely hanging on, the Rock Riders tenuous allies at best, and if Capable hadn’t intervened-

She hugs her aching stump to her chest, pushing hard against the scar tissue with her remaining fingers. It does little to ease the awful phantom cramp, but it’s something urgent and visceral that focuses her mind. She can still feel the heft of the pistol in her hand, the resistance of Raygear’s skull pushing back against the tip. 

Max’s breathing slowly acquires the soft hiccup she’s come to identify with fitful sleep. 

The weight of that moment in the garage hangs on the edge of her consciousness like an impending storm, streaked with angry colors and heavy with consequence. The reaction had been instantaneous, the simple response of muscle to instinct, and now she feels shredded, as beaten as if she’d fallen from the top of the War Rig at top speed.

As soon as she’d gotten her own motorcycle, Katie had wasted no time. “Stick to the ruts, if you can,” her Initiate Mother had instructed sternly. “The sand will be more compact. Let the rut guide your tires. If we’re being followed, careening all over will tell them exactly how many of us there are.”

_Whatever you do, you keep moving._

She’s been riding in ruts for thousands of days, and she is suddenly, acutely afraid that she will not be able to change her path. She is still the Bag of Nails. She could peel the skin from her face and still feel the lingering slick of Imperator grease on her forehead. She can try to be a person - and maybe even succeed on certain days - but she will never be free of the weight of the twin engines she carries within her ribcage.

She is the last of Joe’s Imperators. She hasn’t thought of herself that way until now, but it’s the truth. She’d gone from being Joe’s Imperator to Angharad’s, without even realizing she’d been turned. Now, both Angharad and Joe are food for crows. The Wives have become leaders, and the Vuvalini are here to support them. The Citadel is growing and changing, but Furiosa doesn’t feel any different. 

The other Imperators are gone. Furiosa is still here.

She just doesn’t know if she should be.


	129. Chapter 129

As soon as Furiosa is gone, Toast turns on Capable. “You shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have said that!”

The Riders are clustered on the far side of the garage engaged in their own hissed discussion, a defensive knot still hyper-aware of the Vuvalini and the two Repair Boys. The guns are lowered, but everyone still has their weapons close at hand. “We are too close to losing everything,” Capable snaps. “Can we talk about this later?”

“No!” Toast snaps back. “We need Furiosa, and you just told her to fuck off!”

“The Riders are our allies-”

“-who tried to use Furiosa’s clan as negotiation fodder! Just because we have an agreement does _not_ make them our allies!” 

It is too late at night and Capable has been awake far too long to be having this argument. She is acutely aware of the Riders’ stiff posture, how they are listening to every word. Toast knows this makes the Citadel look weak, but her voice is still raised in complete disregard for Capable’s silencing hand gestures. “We _can’t_ do this now-”

“No, _we_ can’t, because _you_ already did-”

“The Riders are the closest thing we have to allies right now,” Capable says desperately. “You were at the table. We agreed. We _all_ agreed.”

“I’m not the one who who told Furiosa to back off!”

“And _I’m_ not the one who drew a gun without warning!” 

“Maybe she knows something we don’t!”

“Her eyes,” Cheedo breaks in, hushed. “She looked so scared...Capable, maybe one of us should go talk with her-”

“There’s no _point_!” The words come out far more plaintive and bitter than she intends, but once they’re said, she can’t take them back. 

She’s exhausted and she’s frustrated. In the moments when she’s not running back and forth between squabbling factions within the Citadel, she’s been trying everything she possibly can to break through to Furiosa, and up until Furiosa had raised her pistol to Raygear’s head, Capable had truly thought they’d reached an understanding. Her entire life, she’s believed that if she tried hard enough, if she empathized hard enough, she could find common ground, and every time, _every time_ she’s thought she’s gotten through to Furiosa, something else happens and it thrusts her right back into doubt. It’s a cruel thing to say, and even crueler to believe, and shame pricks in her eyes. “She’s got Max,” she tries, “she won’t-”

Even Cheedo is wearing an expression of reproach. 

“So you’re giving up?” Toast shakes her head, and by the curl of her lip it’s as if she’s staring once again at the boils on Joe’s ass. “She didn’t give up on _us_ -”

“I’m _not_ giving up-”

“You might be the voice of the Council, but you are _not_ its sole authority!”

That feels like a slap in the face, and it’s even worse coming from Toast. “I _never_ -”

“We are adults,” Mari interjects, her tone carrying the weight of decades, and it’s at once a rebuke and a reminder.

“Some of us are,” Toast grumbles. “If you’re staying here, I’m spending the night with Dag.” 

“Toast-”

“Fuck off, Capable.” 

As her sister stalks off, Cheedo touches Capable’s arm. “I’ll go talk to her. It’ll be okay. You got scared. We all did.” 

There isn’t anything to say to that. Her eyes are burning with unshed tears, and her chest feels like an overfilled water pouch, aching to be released. There’s an angry burn of resentment at Furiosa for not being in control, and the nauseous guilt at feeling that way, because Capable _knows_ Furiosa is trying. 

Mari comes over and puts an arm around Capable’s shoulders. “Come sleep,” the old Vuvalini says, not unkindly. “It’s very, very late, and there isn’t anything that can be done right now.” 

She lets herself be tugged down into the nest of Vuvalini blankets, beneath careworn wool and handspun fibers faded by long exposure. “Someone should keep watch.” 

“I’m awake,” Tamar says. There’s a mound of dust-colored string in her lap, the first few rows of what might be a knitted hat taking shape beneath her callused fingers. She leans closer, her sandy hair falling toward Capable’s face. “Sleep, sister. I’ll keep watch.”

There’s a rare comfort in settling back into the blankets, her head pillowed between Tamar and Maadi, with Maadi’s thin fingers combing through her hair. Everything has been so harried for so long, the rare moments in the Salon too often interrupted, and at times Capable misses the languid female comfort of the Vault. She misses long hours spent brushing each other’s hair, reading aloud from the wealth of books, of falling asleep in a companionable pile of arms and legs. 

She knows it wasn’t perfect. She knows she wanted out as much as anyone did, and that the entire Citadel is better off, but...Toast spends most of her time with the War Boys, reviewing and improving their defenses. Dag invests all of her energy in tending her plants, and Mari has kept Cheedo running every moment she’s not asleep. The Citadel is better for their efforts, and Capable is fiercely proud, but...she misses her sisters. 

She misses Angharad. 

On the other side of the garage, the Riders have arranged their bikes in a circle, creating a protective barrier between them and any potential Citadel threat. Most are bedded down in well-worn blanket rolls, curled up in twos and threes against the chill of the desert night that creeps up from the stone. The warm light of the little rocket stoves throws huge, flickering shadows around the room. 

One of the Riders slips out of the circle, and comes to kneel by Valkyrie. “Can I get you anything?” she asks quietly. She’s dark-haired, her eyes ringed with pale circles where the sun couldn’t tan beneath her goggles. “Are you well?”

Valkyrie reaches over to squeeze the Rider’s hand. “Thank you, Nyree. We’re fine. Are you alright?”

The Rider glances at Capable. “If he’d been shot, we’d be wearing your blood. Wilgee keeps us safe, but Furiosa is known to us.” 

“She freed us,” Capable says. It’s still incongruous, that act. It had happened so suddenly, after months of silence. Furiosa had shown up in the Vault and pulled them from their beds, and they’d gone, sneaking through the halls with their hearts in their throats, more than half-afraid she’d change her mind. Angharad had been confident that Furiosa would help them, but Capable was a Gastown girl, and the brutality of the Bag of Nails was legendary. 

Sometimes, she forgets that Furiosa and the Imperator of those stories are the same person, that the taciturn woman afraid to sleep in their midst has been one of the most feared names in the Wasteland for the better part of twenty years. 

“You stood up to her,” the Rider says. “What’ll she do?”

“What?” She flounders. “The Council will have to discuss-” 

“You, ranga.” The Rider is looking at her with earnest concern. “She en’t gonna hurt you?”

Valkyrie also looks troubled, her dark eyes full of unasked questions. She’d been the first one to cross the sand, to open her arms to Furiosa, to recognize her when the others had doubted. That moment is burned into Capable’s mind: they’d been driving for a day and a night, the ragged Wasteland turning into the endless rolling dunes, a sea of nothing in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly, there were mothers, women of a kind she’d never seen before. 

Now, Amy is dozing nearby while Tamar knits, Maadi comfortably burrowed beneath the blankets and Mari braiding her hair for sleep. These are Furiosa’s people, her clan, and Capable’s heart sinks when she realizes they know about as much of Furiosa as she does. Probably even less. 

“She won’t hurt me,” Capable says firmly, and sees something in Valkyrie unclench. 

“Good.” The Rider gives Valkyrie’s hands a final squeeze. “There’s nerves all over the others, but I had to check.” She drops her voice. “I didn’t say so, but we _are_ grateful to be here. Didn’t know what we’d find, but had to try.”

“We’ll work everything out,” Capable promises. 

After the Rider returns to her clan, Maadi leans over to Capable. “It’s a great risk for them to come,” she murmurs. “None of us knew the outcome of your push back to the Citadel. But the situation was desperate.”

Her earlier question bubbles back into her mind. “Are there children? I don’t see anyone who can’t ride.”

Tamar nods. “There’s a larger camp. We don’t know where; we were kept at a...another camp. Further away.”

“Is that where the spring is?”

“No.” She frowns, searching for the words. “There’s a...smaller spring, where the babies are. Not enough for all, not as safe.”

Capable knows all too well the desperate scrabble for clean water; how many of her cousins had she seen turn yellow and wither? She doesn’t like to count. “As soon as the pumps are up and running, we’ll send what we can.”

Satisfied, Tamar leans back against the stone wall and resumes knitting, humming to herself over the cadence of her needles. Capable pulls the heavy Vuvalini blanket over her shoulders and closes her eyes. 

She’s almost asleep when she feels Valkyrie shift in the nest of blankets. Her tone is hushed, the words almost inaudible. “Mari?”

“Mm?”

Valkyrie takes a breath. “...does it happen often?” 

She’s asking about Furiosa, about the outburst. Capable thinks of the terrifying blankness on Furiosa’s face and shivers. 

In the darkness, there’s a long, measured pause, so long that Capable’s sure everyone has gone back to sleep, and then Mari says quietly, “Every day is its own journey, pet.”

There’s a muffled snort. “You’re full of shit, old woman.”

Mari chuckles. “We keep moving, pet. That’s all there is. None of us are the girls we were, but we keep moving.”

Valkyrie sighs. “How can I help? What can I do?”

“Just be yourself, love. That’s all anyone can do.”

“...she looks worse than she did.”

That earns another chuckle. “Not a one of us will make a magazine spread, pet. But she’s holding her own. Today was not a good day.”

“Called it PTSD back in the day,” Amy sleepily mutters. “Girl’s a loaded grenade, but maybe you’ll have some luck, Val. Can’t be anything but good to have you here.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Valkyrie says, “I can handle a grenade.”

“That’s my girl,” Mari says. “Now sleep. The morning’s only coming earlier these days.”


	130. Chapter 130

Despite herself, Capable sleeps deeply, curled between Tamar and Mari beneath thick blankets that smell of sand and exhaust and the heavy odor of women. Maadi’s taken over watch, cleaning her rifle with a relaxed, languid ease. She’s humming something, an unfamiliar tune that almost sounds like a lullabye. 

The sun’s barely up, the Citadel just beginning to wake. The third shift repair crews are winding down their work, passing their tools to freshly rested Repair Boys. In the middle tower, Jilly’s getting the kitchen ready for the day’s cooking, brewing tea and setting out yesterday’s hard cakes for an easy breakfast.

It feels a little overwhelming, the messy business of staying alive. It never ends. On the other side of the night, the certainty of that fact is oddly comforting. 

Still tucked under the blankets, Capable lets her mind wander. She’s starting to realize that part of the reason she’s so frustrated is because she loves Furiosa the way she’d loved Angharad: wildly, hopelessly, the way someone can love a sunset or the violent beauty of a thunderhead looming on the horizon. It’s a love that endures like the heat of the sun, without any possibility of possession. 

Angharad had come into the Vault with her back straight and her head high, every inch a queen despite the shackles that bound her wrists. “He doesn’t own me,” she’d said, to Capable’s initial noise of disbelief. “He doesn’t own you, either.”

“He’s not bad, as far as men go,” Miss Giddy had tried to tell her. “You’ll get food and water-”

Angharad had shut her down with a single, disdainful look. “You can’t own a human being. We are not things.”

And so it was. The coup was bloodless. Within a week, she’d had all of the resident Wives hanging on her every word. 

Angharad had been a storm. She wouldn’t say where she’d come from, or how she’d been taken. She fought back in every way she could; she attempted escape at every opportunity. She’d treated both Joe and the Organic Mechanic with haughty indifference, as if their treatment of her was unspeakably rude and they themselves utterly unworthy of her time. Capable had only known women who screamed, women who cried, women who truly believed they were being ruined, and for Angharad to act as if the abuse was merely an inconvenience was mind-boggling. Angharad was angry, but controlled, her body and her mind both precision weapons that she used without impunity. 

Her indifference infuriated Joe. He didn’t permit begging or crying from his Wives, but Angharad’s coolness was incendiary. He did everything he could do to court her, intimidate her, break her, and her refusal to even acknowledge his efforts was a source of both aggravation and pride. 

“She’ll bear such strong sons,” he bragged to the Mechanic, nursing a bitten hand. 

Furiosa is different. Capable has long given up of recreating the hours spent on Angharad’s bed, brushing her hair as she read aloud from some dusty tome. If Angharad was powered by some absolute internal edict, Furiosa is driven like a machine, the masters of her past fighting for control. Furiosa will never reveal herself to Capable in whispered midnight confessions, and she doesn’t reward those around her with a rare, shining smile. 

Angharad didn’t know how to be soft; it wasn’t in her nature to be kind or gentle. She was noble in every sense of the word, pure and remote like the gases in Miss Giddy’s old chemistry book. Every word and every syllable was a priceless gift, bestowed upon grubby mortals from the goddess on her cloud. Capable was lovesick, and even now she’s not sure she ever truly accepted that Angharad would never return her affection. 

Furiosa, though. Capable’s seen Furiosa around the Pups, around Max, around her sisters, and despite her assertions to the contrary, Furiosa knows how to be unthreatening in the face of weakness. It’s worked into her bones by the wizened hands of the Many Mothers in a way that can’t be erased. She watches Max with an expression of tender disbelief. She may never turn to Capable for comfort, but somehow, that realization doesn’t ache as much as it might. 

Capable has Keno, who she’d never expected to connect with; every time they’re together, she’s surprised to find she likes his touch, his steadiness, his eager delight in giving her pleasure. She’d told herself that if she got out of the Vault alive, she’d never let another man lay a hand on her, but here she is, pulling him closer and guiding his fingers where she wants them to go. She finds she prefers the platonic comfort of her sisters as often as she prefers sleeping beside him, but he seems to understand. Whatever time she’s able to give him, he’s happy to accept, and he seems as comfortable with their arrangement as she is. 

She misses Angharad. She misses her every day. There isn’t a moment when she doesn’t want to be standing at Angharad’s shoulder instead of standing on her own. She is tired and frustrated, but she’s also alive, and she wonders sometimes if Angharad’s inflexibility would have hurt them more than her magnetic power would have helped.

It isn’t a thing she can know, any more than she can know how to help Furiosa, or what the weather will bring, or what threats are lurking beyond the horizon. 

“Such a serious expression so early in the morning,” Maadi teases gently. “Sleep well, girl?”

“I did, thank you.” Capable stretches, careful not to disturb the other sleepers as she slips from the blankets. The air is chilly and damp, and she hugs herself, wishing she’d thought to bring another blanket to wrap herself in. “How’s the watch?”

“Dead quiet.” The old Vuvalini puts the last piece back on her gun with a practiced snap, and sights down the barrel with a satisfied hum. “Not a peep of noise from our friends, nor from anyone else.”

Her stomach still aches over the fight last night, but quiet...quiet is good. Quiet means the Repair Boys can get through their work unmolested, and the Wretched down below don’t have to fear for their lives and meager possessions. Quiet means Dag’s little seedlings can reach up toward the sun. The War Boys don’t have to run themselves ragged, and can take the time to train-

It hits her right then, as she’s running through her mental checklist of the Citadel’s groups, that she knows exactly who she needs to talk to about Furiosa.

“I’ve got some lizard jerky,” offers Maadi. “Goanna. Pretty good, too.”

“Sorry,” Capable says. “I just realized I need to find Ace.”


	131. Chapter 131

As far as Ace can tell, it started with the Vault. 

He’s been a War Boy for as long as there have been War Boys; he’s lost count of the days, and what does it matter, when he’s got so many thousands of them buried under his skin like tumors. Counting days only matters to the Boys who can number their thousands on one hand; Ace has more thousands than fingers, and long before Furiosa headed east, he’d made peace with that. Death will find him when it does, and in the meantime, he’s got no shortage of work to do. 

He’s served under thirteen different Imperators in various capacities, and Furiosa has always been his favorite. She’d appeared one day amid the older Pups, wearing a pair of stolen trousers and wrapped in the white gauze of the Immortan’s breeders, spitting anger and ready to shred anyone who came near. She wasn’t the first woman to fight, and she wasn’t even the first failed breeder to try and carve herself a new niche. He’d seen it before: a Wasteland girl with nowhere else to go, clever enough to avoid getting thrown off the lift and desperate enough to think she could make it amid the hard-scrabble War Boys after living so soft up in the Vault. She’d last less than a handful of days, and how could she not? If she was too weak to hold the Immortan’s powerful seed, she was certainly too weak to do War. 

But Furiosa was anything but weak. To this day, Ace still doesn’t understand it. She’d lasted the day, and a hundred days after that. She’s been, in his estimation, the perfect Imperator: ruthless with her enemies, dutiful to the Immortan, reasonable with her allies and fair with her crew. If any woman could be the ideal mother for the Immortan’s perfect child, it’s Furiosa. 

He’s heard the other rumors, the ones whispered by the other Imperator’s crews: that she’s not really female, that she was born in-between, that her strength comes from hidden testicles buried where her womb should be. Normal Wasteland women are sometimes sterile, but none of _them_ go on to be Imperators. Her cunt is filled with spikes that she can extrude at will, it’s full of acid that ate the Immortan’s seed before it could get to her womb. She’s the Bag of Nails. There are a thousand different stories, but he puts stock in none of them. 

He’s not the Organic Mechanic. He can rebuild an engine, but when it comes to people, he’s less concerned with the parts than with the overall machine. Furiosa doesn’t fight like the other Imperators; she wastes no time with posturing, and goes straight for the kill. He’s seen her gentle a scared Pup, and he’s come to recognize her quiet grief when one of her crew makes it to Valhalla or dies soft. She has no tolerance for mediocrity, but she has a sixth sense for potential, and is willing to invest the time and energy training a War Boy others might have overlooked. Whatever her parts, he’s fine with the way she’s running. 

From the moment she was granted her belt and her scarf, Ace has hoped that if he’s going to die, he’ll do it on her watch. He has to be Witnessed by Furiosa, because the thought of ever serving under any other Imperator is intolerable. 

Which is why it rankles him. Everything was _fine_ until she’d been assigned to the Vault. They’d just gotten back from a long run to Bartertown, battered but successful, and he and Furiosa were inspecting the War Rig when the Prime Imperator came into the garage. “Bag of Nails,” he’d sneered. “The Immortan wants to see you.”

She’d been absent for almost two hundred days, and he’d feared the worst, but just as suddenly she was back, but he couldn’t read her anymore. He’d tried everything - cajoling, coaxing, even threats when he was feeling particularly bold. She’d just give him this _look_ that was somehow both inscrutable and maybe just the tiniest bit sad, and never say a word.

He’d thought she was mourning her failure as a Wife, and that _still_ didn’t make sense. He knew through the rumor mill that one of the Immortan’s other breeders - the golden one, the favorite the Immortan referred to as Splendid - was pregnant; perhaps Furiosa was upset that she’d lost that place, that she wasn’t the one to be called Splendid. Furiosa is fierce and strong and ruthless as the Wasteland itself, and if there was any woman who could be worthy of bearing the Immortan’s child, it had to be her. 

She’d been distant, but he’d tried. A good ace runs the crew with one eye on the boss, always anticipating the boss’s moods and whims, but Ace was flailing. He spent tens of days rolling the situation around in his brain, trying to see what had disappointed her. She wasn’t the Immortan’s Wife, not treasured up in the Vault, but wasn’t being an Imperator just as good? She had access to the best of the Citadel, and a crew besides. 

(And it was a _good_ crew. He knew. He’d hand-picked each War Boy, and gotten her approval for every one. They were dedicated. They were clever. They were skilled mechanics and fierce warriors. As a crew, they ran like the Immortan’s own engine, greased and proper and humming with efficiency.)

At least, that’s what he’d thought, right up until the moment she’d punched him in the throat. 

He’s back to counting days again. His leg hasn’t healed well, despite the skillful work of the old desert witch, so he’s stuck here training Pups when he really, desperately needs to be watching Furiosa’s back. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the scav sharing her bed, but...he doesn’t. Not completely. 

(He’d assumed Furiosa was the name she’d given herself, a name worthy of a future Imperator and guaranteed to inspire fear in her enemies. Everyone who knew her knew she carried an incredible fury in her bones, a force more terrifying than any of the brutal acts Ace had witnessed performed by other Imperators. It was nothing to be brutal in the Wasteland, but Furiosa...Furiosa is unique. 

He didn’t know it was the name her mother had given her.) 

He’s idling. He can feel it. It’s early in the day, the others still waking up, but the cold hurts his leg, so he’s checking tire pressure and oil levels, just for some reason to move. 

The red-haired Breeder comes in, looking around before walking right for him. “Keno’s up on the terrace still,” he says, because that’s usually who she looks for. 

“I was looking for you, actually.”

“Mm?” 

“Ace,” Capable says quietly. “Can you tell me about forbidden technology?”

The question catches him off-guard. He straightens up, squinting at her suspiciously. “Seems it tells itself.”

She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. Well. Good for her. The breeders are a smart lot, he’s got to give them that. 

“Not so much forbidden as...useless,” he allows. “Lots of things from Before - well, it all got lost. You know that. Stuff made then can’t be made now. Can’t be repaired.’

“So no one is allowed to try?”

He snorts. “Try and shoot down the sun, you’ll have about as much luck.”

“What about the windmills? Is that forbidden?”

“Ask Keno.”

“I’m asking you,” she counters. 

“Stuff like that requires specialization. No point in teaching ten Pups if only one’s gonna need it.” She’s a full-life. She doesn’t understand the point of the half-lives is the be useful and to die historic. Anything else takes too much time. Only seven of those ten Pups will live to see five thousand days; if they’re lucky, they’ll die historic not long after. Training up takes time, the sort of time most Wasteland folk don’t have, half-life or not. 

She’s still looking at him expectantly, so he relents. “You find something out on salvage, you got to turn it in. They got stuff at Bartertown they don’t got here, but maybe they need it. We don’t need it.” He’s old enough to have seen radios and other almost-magical things before they became impossibly rare, and he’s been around long enough to have heard drunken stories about how the fastest stars are really just metal boxes men from Before put into the sky. 

(He’s not sure he believes that last one, not really.)

He doesn’t know how to explain to this full-life breeder how the Citadel works - or, rather, how it worked, before she and her sisters somehow convinced Furiosa to help them bring it crashing down. He knows Furiosa understands all this, and might do a better job of explaining, but...Furiosa’s lost. She’s been lost since she threw her weight into the steering wheel and sent them careening into the desert. 

He’s still following her because she’s still the Boss, even if everything’s different now.   
“What was the punishment for having forbidden technology?” Capable asks, and ah, now he understands. 

He knows about the scene with the Rock Riders. Citadel supply expeditions had free passage through the canyons before the Riders staked their claim, but those are days so far behind him that they’re even hazier than the memory of an angry, coltish breeder determined to stake her claim among his Boys. The Riders have been alternately bribed, intimidated and avoided, and while he understands there _must_ have been some secret deal made to secure Furiosa’s passage - she’s a good shot, but no one is good enough to single-handedly fend off the entirety of an angry tribe - the notion that the Riders are now allies is uncomfortable, itching like a bad coat of paint. 

He would have shot the Rider leader dead himself, and dealt with the aftermath. Too many uncertainties, too many unknowns. 

“Depends on the Imperator,” he says. If the tech in question to help a car, it might be okay - might even be worth a promotion if it worked right. More than one War Boy’s been promoted to Driver for finding a way to replicate the right little fiddly bit for an engine. But if a Boy is trying to use the tech as leverage, something to trade for information or supplies - well, that gets stamped out in a way that’s usually very messy and very public. Hoarding damages the entire crew, makes a crew not trust each other, and if you’ve got your eye on the Boy next to you, you don’t have your eye on the road. 

“Nothing is forbidden now,” Capable says firmly. “Do you understand? We need everything we can get, and I don’t want anyone punished for finding useful salvage.”

He absently chews on one of the lumps in his lower lip. There has to be a better reason that he’s not communicating, but...whatever it is, it’s lost to the many thousands of days cluttering his skull. Joe had passed many edicts, and Ace hadn’t really questioned them - it was easier not to, and it’s hard to explain that to this wild-haired breeder, the protection that blind faith can afford. 

She’s still looking at him expectantly, her gaze as sharp as a crow waiting for movement, and he heaves a sigh. “I’ll pass it down the line.”


	132. Chapter 132

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love you people. I am so grateful for you. it's been a stupid week here in the US, but you're always a bright spot in my life.

The sun rises, the desert quickly warming under its harsh glare. The days are turning longer, the icy shadows of the dunes fading into the blinding day. 

The night crew has made impressive strides on the windmill repairs, and as the sun crests the mountains, the able-bodied Riders warily join forces with the day crew. When the initial trepidation wears off, it’s only a single group of blackthumbs, some in ragged headgear and some in white paint, all deeply absorbed in doing what they do best. There’s weeding and watering to be done, the endless daily chores of farming, the thin irrigation lines of sun-rotted metal to be taped and patched as best as can be done. 

Toward midday, the night crew comes back out. Capable has Dag’s unnamed daughter swaddled against her chest, a long veil of weather-bleached cloth over them both as she moves between the rows of amaranth, collecting insects off the plants’ tall purple spikes. Keno greets her with a smile, one large hand gently cupping the baby’s head as he leans over to kiss Capable’s cheek. “This is good,” he says, nodding to the mixed work crew. “We’re faster on the welds, but they got skill with the gears. Might get us in water faster.”

She pops a beetle in his mouth, which he chews appreciatively. He looks exhausted, and all she wants to do is take him in her arms and let him sleep, Dag’s child cuddled between them. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“You already do everything,” he says fondly, and steals one last kiss before heading back up the terrace. She watches him go, his long, loping stride, and her heart is fiercely, pleasantly full. 

The shadows are stretching toward dusk when the shout goes up. Across the field, two of the newly-righted windmills slowly spin to life in the breeze, and as if drawn in a chain, another one, another _three_ creak into movement. 

Five windmills. Five windmills, up and working. Five, when they only needed four more to run one pump at full capacity. 

It’s too miraculous to even believe, and for several long, thudding heartbeats, she can’t move, can’t react, can only stare as the blades pick up speed. 

It’s not until a great roar crests the edge of the terrace that the reality of it hits her. A slow trickle is coming out of the three pipes, a winding dark stripe down the orange rock, and the Wretched below are screaming with joy and relief. It’s not enough for the long-term, not enough to quench the thirst of the thousands clustered at the base of the towers, but it’s enough to keep people on the ground alive, to keep the crops irrigated, to produce just enough to trade with Gastown. 

As soon as she can, she hands Dag’s daughter off to the milk mother Thimble, who welcomes the baby against her breast, and Capable goes to find Keno, her heart overflowing like the water below. 

He’s so exhausted he’s swaying a little, and so abjectly relieved that tears are running down his face, carving dark trails in the chalk. “We did it,” he says breathlessly, and before he can say anything else she’s stealing the air from his mouth.

“Come with me,” she says. 

There’s a secluded spot near the stubborn little olive trees that they’re both getting to know well. She fills her water pouch from a nearby garden spigot, the pipes coughing rust and mud before the cool, perfect liquid flows clear. He doesn’t protest when she lays him down, and his eyes slip closed as she uses her dampened veil to gently wipe the paint and grease from his skin. When she takes off her shirt, he’s ready for her, and for the first time, she takes control, slowly rocking her hips against his until they both collapse, boneless with release. 

“You are...so _shine_ ,” he manages, shuddering as she slips free. 

“Sleep,” she tells him, kissing his eyelids before snuggling into the hollow of his shoulder. “You’ve earned it.”

 

****

 

There are other repairs to be made, and Furiosa makes herself useful. She retreats into the hollow of her chest, becoming a tool, a vehicle, a body wielding a wrench and a welder. She pulls her scarf up over her face, hiding behind cloth and goggles and a poorly-contained snarl. 

She didn’t think she’d slept, but somehow, she had, and only awoke when Max gently eased his shoulder from underneath her head. “Just gonna piss,” he’d murmured, but it had been light enough to see the ruin of her room, and the raw, acid burn in her throat chased away any further ability to sleep. 

She remembers Capable’s firm directive, and there’s a twisted pleasure in obeying. The Vuvalini are with the Rock Riders, and if she must avoid the Riders, then she can also avoid the Vuvalini. It’s stupid, it’s childish and cowardly, but that’s Val - that’s _Val_ , Val who died, Val who is somehow brilliantly, painfully alive. Val, who once ran and swam and danced, who moves now with a grimace like the frailest old mother. 

They were sisters once, twined together like two young vines reaching up to the sun. Now, they are aging scions from a dying tree, gone rootless in the harsh soil. 

Furiosa knows what she is. If she can give anything to Val beyond her life and her breath, she wants to give her innocence: the peace of a cherished memory, carefully worn like a favorite stone and untarnished by the rough hand of time. Val is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen - she is hope, she is the golden past, she is the living embodiment of the Green Place itself - and one single day in Furiosa’s presence sent her tumbling to an injury that should have proven fatal. 

How many times has Amy said it? Furiosa is a loaded grenade. She is a weapon. There is death in her heart and blood on her hands, and she will do whatever it takes to prevent herself from further damaging Valkyrie. 

Just before the sun sinks below the horizon, she’s on a crawler under the rig, stubbornly chasing an oil leak when one of the Pups on watch comes to tap urgently on her foot. “There’s something going on, you need to come see-”

She’s brittle as old plastic, and has been a hairsbreadth away from shattering all day. She forces herself to take a deep breath. “Be specific.” It’s a common admonishment, said mildly and without rancor. 

“Out in the Wretched-”

At least one pump is back on. She heard the cheer go up, heard the others discussing it. She feels too fragile to be around others, so she’s kept her head under the rig all day. “They’re celebrating, Spike.”

“No, it’s a man. He’s standing at the lift. He’s dressed real chrome.”

She sighs, pushing herself out from under the rig. Her whole body is tingling with needles of inactivity, but the Pup is dancing with anxiety, so she rubs briskly at her legs, following him back to the lift platform as soon as she can move through the cramp. 

There indeed is a man standing in the road. He’s heavily wrapped in dusty fabric, an equally dusty two-wheeled contraption at his side. 

“Is that a bicycle?” Toast asks, appearing at her shoulder.

The vehicle is less important than the man himself, dark-skinned and hairless, his eyes expectant dark stones. Usually, the Wretched crowd around any new arrivals, but something about him has caused them to give a wide berth, despite his apparent lack of weapons. 

Even at this distance, Furiosa knows him instantly. “That’s the Actuary.”


	133. Chapter 133

“That’s the Actuary?” Toast frown. “ _The_ Actuary?”

A thousand questions flash through Furiosa’s mind, immediately overwhelmed by a seeping sense of calm. He would not come if he had another choice, certainly not on such a ridiculously desert-averse contraption. He would not come if there was a more efficient way of communication, and whatever the situation, it’s out of balance enough that he is willing to risk bicycling despite the desert and the Buzzards and any other threat that might materialize. 

The Citadel has something he needs. The balance of power has somehow shifted. He is dangerous, but so is Furiosa. “Let him up,” she says. “And then get Capable and the others.”

He doesn’t speak until he’s seated at the large stone table, the Council and the Rock Rider leaders warily circled around him. Carefully draping his dusty robes on the back of his chair, he smooths the front of his pristine black suit and drinks deeply from the offered canteen. “I apologize for the intrusion,” he says, black eyes as flat as wet stone. “I find myself in need of information.”

“Information you couldn’t ask for through other channels?” Capable asks. 

He doesn’t deign to respond. The answer is obvious. 

“Furiosa says you’re the Actuary,” Capable tries again. “My name is Capable.”

“A breeder. Traded on day 10953, for seventeen liters of vodka. Based on age, family history and overall health, possibility of carrying a live male birth to term: three percent.” He takes another swig from the canteen, and reaches into an interior pocket for a small pot of grease, which he begins to methodically massage into his hands. “You are known.”

Stunned, Capable can only look down at her hands, a bright flush creeping across her cheeks

“Well, I’m not acquainted,” says Wilgee. She eyes him critically. “Dressed awful fancy for a man from the stinking town.”

One eyelid twitches. “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

She frowns. “Awright, you clean. Whose god you tryna be, then?”

He considers her. “Rock Rider. Far out of your territory. Came to the Citadel, not to Gastown, despite the recent Amnesty. You need water, not fuel. Seventy percent chance you’re here to leverage the Rock Riders’ past association with Imperator Furiosa against your current needs.”

Raygear crosses his arms. “And what would you know about our current needs, eh?”

“She’s not an Imperator anymore,” Cheedo pipes up, and Furiosa feels a cold prickle of something very like shame along her spine. She last wore her grease on one of the Buzzard runs before Max returned, but when he came back, the grease just felt...wrong. She wants him to look at her and see only the person, the individual he spread open with inexorable, smoldering tenderness.

She wants Max to see her. She doesn’t want Val to see her. There’s a storm inside her chest, sand whipping her innards raw. 

“Our discussions with the Rock Riders are between us and them,” Capable says firmly. “You came here for information. Why?”

“There is a systemic inefficiency that can no longer be tolerated.” The tone of the Actuary’s voice doesn’t change, staying as mild as if he’s merely discussing tolerable weather. “The leadership at the Bullet Farm must change.”

There is a long moment of silence. Furiosa risks a glance at Max, and his eyebrows are hitched toward his scalp. 

“We don’t know the leadership,” Capable finally says. “We have not made contact.”

The Actuary frowns. “They are former followers of Immortan Joe. There was a ninety-two percent chance they would attempt to overthrow you.”

Capable looks to Furiosa, unsure of how much to reveal. 

It’s no small risk to bike the length of the Last Road, the unsteady strip of dusty pavement between Gastown and the Citadel. The Actuary would not have made the journey without cause, and his faith in them - his faith that they would listen - should at least be respected. Furiosa had assumed if the Actuary wasn’t taking his orders directly from the Blood, he was at least in league with whoever it was claiming to be Joe’s heir. “We have evidence they are supplying the Buzzards.” 

There is no mistaking the surprise that flashes across his face, which quickly settles into a deep frown. “I was told the increase in fuel requests was due to damage sustained during the coup.”

“The _revolution_ ,” Cheedo interjects. “It was a revolution.”

“You don’t know either,” breathes Capable. “You’re locked in your tower there in Gastown. You don’t know what’s going on over there any more than we do.”

He frowns, but doesn't deny it. 

She crosses her arms. “What makes you decide this now?”

His flat dark eyes remind her of a lizard, of being regarding by an intelligence fundamentally different from her own. “I come before you without the Bullet Farm’s knowledge,” he says. “I am here to offer you a deal.”

Toast frowns. “A deal.” 

“It will benefit both of us,” he assures her. 

Capable leans forward. “We’re listening.”

“You have not supplied the Bullet Farm with water since the coup-”

“-the _revolution_ ,” Cheedo breaks in.

One eye twitches, but otherwise he doesn’t react. “We supply them with various petrochemicals as they request. One truck, carrying barrels, no escort. Eliminate the current Bullet Farm leadership, the one called The Blood, and I will consider your water debt paid.”

“One truck? No escort?” Toast snorts in disbelief. “That’s a suicide mission! The amount of firepower-”

“They will not allow more.” The Actuary looks directly at Furiosa. “Depending on the outcome of the mission, we may even choose to renegotiate our own agreement.”

Her heart is suddenly throbbing hard in her mouth. She knows full well what he means. Toast is right - it’s a suicide mission, going deep into the Bullet Farm with no backup and no real idea of who or what she’s facing - but if she goes, if Furiosa chooses this, not only is the Citadel’s water debt erased, she may be able to prove that she is not as great a liability as the Actuary perceives. 

She closes her eyes, a sudden wash of memory like the cool, damp air of the Vault. She’d been fresh off a successful run to Bartertown, her cargo and her crew intact, when Joe had first assigned to guard his treasures. Her first encounter, the Wives were reading a book, a dense and dusty tome in brown leather. 

“Peach,” Cheedo had announced. “A small stone fruit with pale-colored flesh.” The girl had grinned. “Sounds yum!”

The book was a dictionary. Furiosa sat nursing a silent resentment at being given such a useless task while the women discussed every word. It would take twelve days before something inside cracked open and Furiosa began to listen. All the while, the women kept on reading. 

One of the words was defined as the act of regaining something in exchange for clearing a debt. “That sounds just like payment,” Toast said dubiously.

“It’s more than that,” Miss Giddy had corrected. “The connotation is more of paying to cleanse the soul of sin. It derives from a term describing the payment used to free a slave.”

The word comes back to her now, as sharp and clear as the path she intends to follow. “Redemption,” Furiosa says quietly. 

The Actuary inclines his head. “Indeed.”

“ _No_ ,” Capable says, alarmed. “Furiosa, no.”

“When?” Furiosa asks. 

Toast bursts out, “We’re going to _talk_ about this first-”

“Now,” the Actuary says. “Your water delivery is overdue. You will come back with me. I have a vehicle prepared.”

She should feel afraid, but all she feels is calm. This is movement. This is something concrete she can do. 

_Do whatever it takes._

_You keep moving._


	134. Chapter 134

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not super enamored of how this one is laid out, but...ehhh. Shoving it out the door to make room for the next. 
> 
> you're all incredibly lovely and I am still thrilled to bits to be sharing this crazy journey with y'all

He knows what she’s going to say before she says it. He knows her nature like he knows how to breathe - unconsciously, without a moment of study, and if he stops and stutters it’s because any unconscious thing loses rhythm under scrutiny. Max responds to threats by rabbiting, his entire being clenching with the sudden, inescapable urge to flee. Furiosa stomps on the accelerator and barrels headlong into the firestorm, heedless of any damage she might take.

Max leaves. Furiosa stays.

He watches her as the room explodes with indignant protest, as she negotiates the terms of the run with the Actuary. Before the world ended, there was a cemetery in his small town, where his father took him once or twice to visit the headstones of relatives whose connection he’s long forgotten. He doesn’t remember the names inscribed into the dark stone, but he remembers his father’s face, the way he brushed his fingers across the stone almost without touching it. Furiosa’s face is much the same.

There are many types of grief, he’s come to realize. There is the quiet acceptance like his father’s, and there is the blazing tornado of his own. Jessie and Sprog were ripped away from him like a limb he didn’t know he needed for balance until suddenly it was severed and bleeding. He doesn’t know how old he is - he doesn’t know if that even matters anymore, when one day is much like the next and the concept of a calendar was burned away with the topsoil - but he is suddenly, solidly sure that he has spent more of his life grieving for his family than he ever spent loving them.

_I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead._

They are survivors, the both of them, Max and Furiosa. They do what needs to be done to get through the day and continue on to the next, and they’ll face the inevitable consequences as they come. The lives they lead, there isn’t time or energy to think about the future, and what the Actuary is doing is offering a solution to a problem Furiosa has been fighting against for months. Of course she’s going to take it. Of course she’s going to throw herself into the flames if it’s the only means of smothering the fire.

The moment out on the Salt - that was an aberration. Or - it wasn’t. He could have ridden away - he _did_  ride away - but he knows the Salt far too well, knows its yawning, fatal emptiness because he carries its twin inside his chest, and he couldn’t-

He can’t-

There are bright spots of angry color in Capable’s cheeks, and Toast looks sullenly mutinous. Furiosa grasps the Actuary’s hand, and the man visibly grits his teeth against the touch like it’s a necessary poison.

“It is agreed,” the Actuary says, and Max feels the muscles in his injured shoulder clench in remembered pain.

She is calm. Her eyes find him above the uproar, and he suddenly remembers a moment, hazy with pain and panic, when she looked right at him and said, “Fine. When I yell ‘fool’, you drive out of here as fast as you can.”

She’d been prepared to give him the women, to put him in charge of their freedom because she fully expected to die, and she’d known, somehow she’d known that he’d help them get somewhere safe.

He hadn’t known that about himself. He still doesn’t, but when she believed it about him, it became true. He is a dead man wearing the skin of one who is still living, and like the ferals who seek out hot, fresh blood, he feels the most alive pinioned by Furiosa’s green stare. He needs the swell of her breath in his lungs, the warmth of her body against his chilled skin, the certainty of her movement.

All Max can focus on is the paleness of Furiosa’s neck, the lines of her throat and the hollow of her collarbone. She holds his gaze like she’d held the weight of his body, steady and resolute. She’s agreed to go alone, and the gravity of the situation is settling into his chest like a bad cold, aching and heavy.

He wants to put his mouth on the dip of her throat and lose himself inside her. The room is suddenly too hot and too full, and his heart stutters in his chest, pressure building in his stomach for the feel of her lean, muscular legs wrapped around his own.

His guts squirm at the desperate anger on the faces of the women around him. He knows they’ve been trying to help, trying to heal, but he still has dreams where they crowd against his body and smother him with their hands. Furiosa is a dangerous, exquisite person, and when they touch he can taste the danger in her mouth, can smell the violence in the musk of her skin. She is not the sort of person who sits quietly when something can be done, and she’s absolutely right.

He’s going with her. It’s not even a question.

 

****

 

Max is staring at her like he wants to devour her whole, but the Actuary is still talking, and the others are muttering among themselves.

“When will the shipment be prepared?” the Actuary asks, hands steepled delicately on the table.

“We only just got the minimum power back to run a single pump,” Toast cautions. She glances at Keno for confirmation. “Our storage tanks are almost empty, but if we diverted nonessential flow?”

The Repair Boy frowns. “Ten hours. Nine, if we can get another windmill working.”

The Actuary purses his lips in disapproval. “That timeline is not ideal, but it will suffice.”

“The timeline _will_  suffice,” Capable snaps. “We need to prepare backup-”

“The Imperator will drive alone,” interjects the Actuary. “The Bullet Farm will accept a single driver. Any others will be shot.”

Wilgee snorts. “That’s a death sentence, that is.”

Ello’s head snaps up. “We won’t send _anyone_  in without backup-”

“The probability of a passenger being executed is one hundred percent,” the Actuary states coldly.

“How do you know for sure-”

“The probability is supported by the last five deliveries to the Bullet Farm.” He tilts his head, as if daring anyone to contradict him. “Reliable tables cannot be constructed without data, and in this instance, the data has been explicitly clear.”

“Five Gastowners have been killed?” Capable asks. “The Bullet Farmers shot the passengers each time?”

“Thirty-two,” the Actuary corrects. “The first two deliveries were crewed by a full complement of War Boys.”

The hunger on Max’s face is suddenly gone, all expression washed away except for the throbbing of a muscle at his jaw.

Capable opens her mouth and closes it again, her shocked expression like the bony little fish that sometimes washed up dead on the shores of the Green Place. “One driver. No backup. Why should we agree to this?”

“Your Imperator already did,” he says, a hint of smugness creasing the skin around his eyes.

Cheedo snaps, “She isn’t an Imperator anymore!”

“The agreement has been reached,” the Actuary says. “Her title is irrelevant. Now, I must impose upon your hospitality. It was a long ride, and I am far from peak efficiency.”

“Yes- yes,” Capable stammers. “Of course.” Seeming to snap back into herself, she looks to Jilly. “Would you please make sure our guest gets some food?”

The cook nods. “He can kip in one of the old Imperator rooms. Plenty of bunk space.”

The room empties, the Actuary escorted out. The others leave, until it’s the girls and the Vuvalini. “You shouldn’t have agreed to that!” Capable grinds out, a densely vibrating mass of anger from her toes to the tip of each bright hair.

“This was a good agreement.”

_You’re relying on the gratitude of a very bad man._

Capable throws her hands up. “We could have argued for more people! A larger convoy! Not you going in as the sole driver.”

“You heard him - anyone else will be killed.”

“We hid in the cargo hold! Five of us! We can do it again!”

_Did you see it?_

_She went under the wheels._

Furiosa licks dry lips. “I won’t risk you.”

Toast jumps in. “That is not your decision to make! We are a Council. It’s a joint decision!”

“I already agreed.”

“Then take it back! We can still talk about this-”

“Child of Jobassa,” Mari says quietly, and everyone falls silent. “You are more than this.”

Furiosa tucks her human arm under her prosthesis. “I _am_  this. I cannot be anything else.” There’s no sorrow or self-pity, just seven thousand days that no one else should have to spend.

She’s tried being a person, but it’s _hard_ , and it hurts, and even when she thinks she’s doing better, something like that fucking scope will come up and she’ll revert back to being a weapon before she can pull herself out of it. Being a weapon, being an engine - it’s in the memory of her muscles that conscious thought can’t overcome. It’s in her bones like the Bullet Farm’s insidious, toxic lead.

It might be certain death to drive alone to the Bullet Farm, but it needs to be done. The Blood is a mysterious threat that’s been haunting the Citadel, and this is the first opportunity she’s had to pursue it. She’d thought stealing the Wives was certain death, but here she is, two hundred days later.

_Out of the womb, everything hurts._

Her rifle is leaning against the wall, and she reaches over, gently setting it on the wide stone stable. “This was a tree,” she says, gesturing to its splintered wood stock, the material stained with old blood. “This was a tree and now it’s a weapon. It will never go back to being a tree.”

Capable’s eyes flash. “It remembers being a tree-”

“It’s a weapon. It knows it’s a weapon. It was made into a weapon and used as a weapon, and if you plant it in the ground it will never grow.” Her throat is constricting with every heartbeat, her blood congealing in her veins. She stole the Wives because it would hurt Joe, and in the end, her act of revenge is still burning her to ash. Why can’t they understand she needs this? She can’t redeem herself in her own eyes - her guilt is raw and bright - but if she can erase the water debt and improve relations with Gastown, then she needs to do it. The girls are trying to save her, but Furiosa-the-machine is so much more useful than Furiosa-the-person.

“You are not a weapon,” Mari interrupts. “You are not a tree. You are a human being, and you can choose to change and adapt and grow.”

“I’m choosing this,” Furiosa says firmly.

“Furiosa…” Cheedo chews her lip. “The Actuary...what if this is a trap?”

That almost makes her laugh. “Of course it’s a trap.”

“Wait - really?”

“We used to make regular food and water deliveries to the Bullet Farm,” Capable says quietly. “Since we’re not, I’m sure it’s impacted their production, and that’s impacted the Actuary. He’s pitting us against the Bullet Farm; one of us winning might have more favorable statistics over the other, but he just wants the stalemate to be over.”

That feels like a gust of fresh, clean air. Capable, who has been throwing her weight against Furiosa’s since before she even left the Vault, who Furiosa has been dismissing as dangerously naive - Capable understands. She heard what went unsaid, she saw what needed to be seen.

She’s learning.

All of a sudden, Furiosa can’t breathe, but it’s completely different from her usual attacks. She didn’t realize - she didn’t realize until now, until this moment, _how much_  the girls have changed. Capable is standing there angry and every inch the leader the Citadel needed in Angharad’s absence, her eyes and ears and heart always open. Cheedo is within arm’s reach of Mari, her hair tied back and her hands poised to help. Toast is solemn, skeptical, but resolute, a pistol at her waist and three knives in various pouches. Dag is tucked in bed with her new child, recovering until she can sink her fingers deep into the poisoned soil and somehow make it grow.

The Vuvalini aren’t gone. She isn’t the last. The next generation is standing right in front of her, and she never even realized. She has not killed her people, not truly. 

Her throat is tight, a hard lump of emotion bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest. She has no right to feel proud of these girls, or lay any claim to their development, but the feeling is still there, traitorous and overwhelmingly bright. Maadi, Tamar and Val - _Val_ \- are here to help guide these daughters, to step up and stand with Amy and Mari to be mentors and friends.

“Furiosa?” Capable asks. “Are you okay?”

She makes herself swallow, cough, blink. “The Actuary said no backup,” Furiosa says, “but we need to be ready to strike as soon as the Blood’s defenses are down.” She looks to Max, who is still the color of rotten flesh, and she thinks - _oh_. “We should have the bikes out in the dunes, waiting for my signal. I’ll be going in by myself, but I won’t be alone.”

He does not look convinced, and all at once, she wants to be alone with him, to have nothing between them until she can chase the blank horror from his face.

“We should talk with the Riders, then,” Toast says. “Maybe convince them it’s in their best interest to help.”

“Pay them in bullets,” agrees Capable. “I’ll ask Raygear to consider it.” She looks back at Furiosa. “It’s not a good plan, and I’m still angry with you.”

“You’re right not to trust him,” she agrees. “But this is what we’ve got.”

It’s more than they’ve had in a hundred days. If Furiosa can leverage it, it might bring the Citadel - and the girls - something very much like peace.


	135. Chapter 135

It feels like the others will always have more to say, but her mind’s made up. She doesn’t un-make decisions. If she could, she might not have kept the War Rig going, might not have sacrificed a good crew for the freedom of the women. 

She would have died a thousand different ways. Uncertainty is hesitation, and hesitation is weakness.  _ Do whatever it takes. _

A memory: gangly, preadolescent Furiosa with a split lip, vainly trying to swallow back furious tears as Katie taps her toe in impatience. “Well, what did you do wrong?”

“You went too  _ fast- _ ”

“Wrong.” The stick comes whistling down again, and this time, she’s able to drop and roll before it connects. “Tell me what  _ you  _ did wrong.”

“Didn’t do  _ anything _ wrong, you’re not being  _ fair _ -”

“Life is not fair,” Katie snaps, but relents as she considers Furiosa’s bleeding lip. “I got you good there, little one. Here, have some water.” As her young charge drinks, she continues. “Now. What did you do wrong?”

Furiosa glowers. “...went too fast.”

“You can’t control what I do,” Katie reminds her. “You can only control how you react. Now. What did you do wrong?”

“...I didn’t block.”

“Why?”

“Too slow.”

“You’re plenty fast,” Katie corrects. “You  _ hesitated _ . You can’t hesitate. That’s why we practice, until you know the movement in your muscles, and you can react without even involving your brain. It has to be unconscious. You think a goanna thinks before it strikes? It can’t, otherwise it won’t get fed.”

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Furiosa mumbles. 

Katie’s laugh is huge and full. “Keep hesitating, and there’s no chance of that, little one.” She chuckles. “Hurt me. Ha! That’ll be the day.” She cuffs Furiosa affectionately across the ear. “Now, go get your stick. Let’s try this again.”

Katie, who said  _ we keep moving _ over and over again, and probably didn’t hesitate a second when she ignored her own dictum and gunned her throttle. Furiosa’s heart clenches painfully in her chest. She wishes Katie was here now, her imposing bulk a solid and comforting presence. 

She needs to talk to Max, but when she turns to look for him, he’s gone. 

Across the table, Toast is leaning close to Cheedo and Mari. “Ello wanted me to ask about Little,” she murmurs. “Miro’s losing his shit, but won’t talk.”

Mari shakes her head. “Poor child can’t breathe. Almond’s with him now.”

“Can anything be done?”

The Vuvalini sighs, wiping a hand across her face, suddenly haggard. “He’s half-life. It’s been in his blood, his bones. Now it’s in his lungs.”

Miro, the one of Atrox’s War Boys who had defected immediately, unconditionally, just for his little brother. Furiosa frowns. “Is Ello working him right now?”

Toast gives her a disgusted look. “Of course Miro’s working. Everyone’s working. Had to separate him from the Rock Riders, but it’s under control.”

“Good.” How many War Boys had she had on her crew with mates who died soft? She’s counted days but never counted bodies. She’s repeated Katie’s hypocritical words to her crews over and over. “Tell him to keep his head. We keep moving. Have Ace talk to him if you need to.”

Now all of them are staring at her. “No,” snaps Toast. “His brother’s dying, and I’m going to let him have time if he needs.”

“As long as we’re ready for the Bullet Farmers.”

“ _ You _ agreed to the Bullet Farm run,” Capable points out icily, and the atmosphere in the room is suddenly brittle and charged. “The crews have been working overtime trying to get the pumps up and running, everyone is exhausted, and  _ you _ suddenly decided that we’re ready for a full-scale invasion.”

“The opportunity presented itself,” Furiosa retorts. 

Capable shakes her head. “We are not things. The War Boys aren’t things either. He’s a person. Let him grieve.”

“He won’t know how.” The words pop out before she can stop them, but despite the horror on the girls’ faces, it’s the truth. She’s been Joe’s vehicle, she knows the culture of the Citadel. You work through your anger, your grief. You put whatever energy you have into furthering the Immortan’s goals, and  _ that is your life _ . 

She’s been his vehicle. She knows. 

Toast looks murderous, and even Capable has her hands fisted into her armpits, as though trying to physically contain herself from throwing a punch. “You should leave,” Capable says flatly. “Go. Prepare. The rest of us need a moment to be human.”

Her calm is slipping, flaking away like metal gone to rust. This is a good thing that she’s doing, and she’d thought Capable saw that, but despite Furiosa’s best efforts, they’re all angry with her now. 

_ We keep moving _ . 

She doesn’t need thanks; she’s never gotten any anyway. 

 

****

 

He’s working on his car, the steady grind of the ratchet echoing off the stone walls. This corner of the garage is quiet and empty except for his car, the Rock Riders off in the main garage chamber having their midday meal. She’s made no effort to hide her footsteps, so she knows he heard her approach, but he doesn’t say anything. 

She sits, just close enough to hand him a tool if he asks, but far enough away so as not to encroach his personal space. Her shoulder aches from sleeping in her prosthetic, and her stump aches from the cold. There’s a lantern in the corner, a tiny shuddering flame barely bright enough to illuminate the room. Her bad eye rings everything in a blurry halo; it’s worse in the dark, worse with the harsh blue of the cranklights, and if she works on a detailed task too long, her head starts to pound. 

She’s sure Max is working entirely by feel, tucked into the dark cavity under the engine. 

Finally, she asks, “Do you want to talk?”

“No.” The answer is immediate, and then he adds, “...but, mm. Back left wheel needs to be balanced.”

His car is gone to rust, the undercarriage webbed with cracks, but she goes and digs out the crate of weights anyway. 

They work in silence, her spinning the wheel on the balancer, him working on some mysterious component underneath the car. 

“You could have any car you wanted,” she says quietly. There’s a handful of decent wrecks salvaged from the Buzzards, and even with the younger War Boys, there aren’t enough trained drivers that the recovered chassis are in short supply. It’s the manpower and guzzoline the Citadel lacks. 

“Picked this one.”. 

She runs her human hand against the worn rubber, gently slowing the wheel to a stop. “I didn’t know you couldn’t come with me.”

He’s silent a moment, the ratchet still, and then he pushes himself out from under the car. He sits up, elbows on his knees as he works the words around in his head. Finally, he nods to himself. “Car’ll be ready.”

“Max-”

“We keep moving,” he says, and settles back on the crawler.

“I have to do this.”

“I know.” This time, he does look at her, his broad face as serious as she’s ever seen him. “The car’ll be ready.”

It’s as close as he can get to saying he’s got her back. 


	136. Chapter 136

Later, the only thing Ace can think of is that he’s allowed himself to be lulled into complacency. He still can’t put much weight on his bad leg, and he’s been leaning on Ello more than he should be for the management of the remaining War Boys. He doesn’t know the new ones, and has only Ello’s assurances they’re loyal.

He knows better. He should have been talking to them himself. He should have been watching, more closely. He should have been the one to pass the word along, when the desert witch Mari takes him aside and quietly tells him the Pup has died. It’s a small mercy for a small life filled with illness, and one he’s had to watch happen more than he cares to remember. 

He’s going soft himself. He should be the one to pass the word along, but he lets Ello be the one to carry the news to the rest of the crew. 

It’s not unexpected. There’s a quiet moment - the little one didn’t die in combat, so he remains painfully unWitnessed - and then everyone gets back to work. The pumps are back online, and there’s a trade convoy to prep, and everyone is chafing at having to share close quarters with the Rock Riders. More work than sleep, but that’s nothing new. 

It comes to a head in the garage. Ace should be watching, he should be anticipating, but he’s been up and down the stairs more than he should, and the pain in his leg is a loud thumping ache that dulls his senses. He should be supervising, but instead he’s gritting his teeth over a socket wrench while a handful of others run checks on the rig. Furiosa is inspecting one of the engine plates, Keno and Riz at her side. The wastelander crouches near the front bumper, checking the tire pressure. 

One moment, everything is completely normal, and the next there’s a wild howl - “Immortaaaaaan!” and a screwdriver seems to sprout from the side of Furiosa’s neck.

Everyone reacts at once. Keno, Riz and Spade all leap, but Max is faster, and Furiosa fastest of all. She hits quickly - solar plexus, groin and then Miro facedown is on the ground, in a headlock with Furiosa on his shoulders and Max on his legs. 

“Fuck you!” Miro gasps out. “You traitored him, you traitored all of us, you ally us with  _ filth _ and attack our brothers-”

She leans down to his ear, pressing his cheek hard against the floor with her prosthesis. Max is passing a knife to her human hand even before she asks for one.

“I...am...awaited!” the War Boy pants. “I will die...historic-”

“You will die soft,” she snarls, and in one clean motion, she slices at the back of his neck, expertly fitting the blade between his vertebrae. His body twitches at the sudden loss of signal, and he tries to gasp but his lungs no longer respond.

Satisfied, Furiosa lurches to her feet, Max at her elbow. The screwdriver is still in her neck, a thin line of blood trickling down her throat, and her eyes are hard. “Anyone else feel like I made the wrong choice?” she croaks. “Anyone else think they’ll do a better job than this mediocre sun-eaten filth?” She nudges Miro’s shoulder with her boot.

His mouth opens and closes like a panting crow, eyes wild with panic as he suffocates in his own body. Ace looks away; it’s a bad moment and a bad death, especially on the heels of the Pup, but Furiosa is the boss and she has to make sure that fact is unequivocable.

Finally, Miro stops twitching and goes still. The room is utterly silent.

It’s only then that Furiosa seems to notice the screwdriver, and with a look of mild surprise starts to sink. Ace tries to catch her, but the weight of both their bodies lands on his bad leg, and they both go tumbling to the floor. The pain in his leg is overwhelming, and for a moment everything hazes to white.

Max scrambles over to where Ace is slowing clawing back to consciousness, Furiosa awkwardly sprawled against his chest.

“Hey...hey,” the wasteland feral says, his hands moving uselessly over the both of them. “Don’t move, don’t move.” He snaps his fingers at the other Repair Boys, spearing them with a look that could ignite steel, his words tripping on themselves in his urgency.. “Get the women. The healers! Go!”

Ace thinks he will vomit if he has to move.

Furiosa’s human hand brushes against the screwdriver, but then Max grabs at her fingers when she moves to pull it out. “No-! Don’t,” he huffs, and then she’s moving gingerly off Ace, Max’s hands on her head, elbows braced on her shoulders. “Don’t move. Your head - don’t.”

There’s blood dripping down Furiosa’s collarbone.  “Legs, feet, arms,” the feral rasps. “Anything. Can you feel?”

She’s breathing hard, the bloodlust bleeding out slowly. “Still moving, aren’t I?” she mutters. She rolls her eyes to Ace. “You okay?”

He grunts. “Been better.”

Max huffs.

Then Mari is there, and the breeder Cheedo, and the milker healer whose name he doesn’t remember. He passes out.

 

****

When Ace wakes up, he’s in the Vault, and the entire lower half of his body is in agony. He tries to sit up, but that’s even worse.

“Fool man,” Mari says. “Stay still. ”

He blinks. 

“I’ll tie you down,” she warns, one eyebrow arched. He fully believes she’s capable of it, and that’s fine, she’s a fellow warrior in her own right. This is her garage, and she’s entitled to his respect. 

Still, he has to ask. “The boss?”

Something changes in her face, a hardness that he hasn’t seen before. “Got damn lucky,” Mari mutters. “Could have gone through her trachea, could have taken an artery or a vein, could have severed her spine.” She rolls her eyes. “Look, I know you’ve got history with our girl, but she’s on the wrong path.”

His head’s still fuzzy. “So...she’s all right?”

Mari snorts. “All right?” She shakes her head, her normally imperturbable calm veering into something slightly more hysteric. “That girl hasn’t been in the vicinity of all right since the day she-” She closes her mouth with a decisive click of her teeth. “But. Not my job, eh? Got enough mothering to do, not that she’s ever listened to any of it from any of us, mind you. Jo Bassa was a handful, but mothers, that’s the curse, isn’t it? ‘May you have a daughter just like yourself’. And then  _ you lot _ took them both, and we never... I  _ never... _ ”

Mari is actually crying, her hands fisted around a wad of fresh bandage. She’s shaking with the effort of holding it back, but failing, and Ace is suddenly acutely aware of the old Vuvalini as an overfilled tire being close to burst. 

He has no context for this. In his head, he’s assigned her a status like the Organic Mechanic, someone with near-absolute authority and near-complete infallibility, but she’s also like a breeder or a milker, someone who is off-limits and would never be part of his daily life. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. He knows how to talk down a War Boy with a bad case of nerves, but this...this is about the Boss, and he has no idea what to say. 

She must sense his confusion, because she wipes at her eyes and pats his arm. “Well. Forgive me. It’s been a hard day for everyone. The babies always get me the worst.”

“Shouldn’t’ve killed him like his Pup,” Ace manages. “Bad enough for one. Should’ve made it quick.”

Mari shakes her head. “I’m too old to say killing’s not the answer, but bloody hell, I’m  _ so tired _ .” She looks at him. “Aren’t you?”

He hadn’t been, not until Furiosa had punched him off the War Rig. He’d been old, but not tired. When he thinks about it, it’s not so much the work - he’s always worked hard, always been sore and always needed slightly more sleep and slightly more food than he’s gotten - but the changes. He understands why Furiosa did what she did - or at least, he thinks he does - and he gets it, he does, that this will eventually be a better future, one with more food and more babies and more of the things that are needed to keep the Citadel alive in the absence of an Immortan Joe to guide them. It’s just...hard. It’s hard to remind himself that it’s okay for the breeders and milkers to be walking around, it’s okay that alliances are being reforged. Metal gets recycled when its original shape is no longer useful; now, people are being recycled, shuffled into different uses that are subjectively better. 

He’s been quiet too long. “Sorry,” Mari says. “Perhaps that’s not something I should ask you.” She moves to start tidying up. 

He grabs her arm. It’s more contact than he’s initiated ever, but he  _ knows _ the pain on her face. “We train them,” he says. “We get them when they’re Pups - or, or when they’re little, and we do what we can. We can’t save them, not from the night sweats, or the tumors, or - or the odd Buzzard, but...we teach them what we know, and we hope they do better.”

“How’s that work for you?” she asks quietly. “You’ve outlived so many of your crew.”

He shrugs. “She was the one who told us to keep moving, and we did.” Before her, it was the same, but Furiosa was the one who made  _ we keep moving _ into a mantra, a rallying cry. 

“We say, ‘out of the womb, everything hurts’.” Mari sighs. “The older I get, the more I understand that the pain goes both ways.” She frowns. “I know you were her crew, Ace, but tell me the truth: do you still trust Furiosa? As she is now, after what happened today?”

Of course he does. He can’t not. It was a bad moment, a bad death, but there’s been air in everyone’s fuel lines. She’s the Boss. She might not have the answers now, but he’s been her ace long enough to know that she’ll get there eventually, and she won’t stop working until then. “Yes. I do.”

She’s silent a moment, thinking. “You trained her too, didn’t you.” It’s not a question. 

“Yes.”

“All right,” Mari says. “I’ll try and remind myself of that.” She pats him on the shoulder again. “Get some rest. Around here, you never know when we’ll be back in the thick of it.”


	137. Chapter 137

Once the immediate danger is over, once Mari, lips bloodless with tension and anger, has carefully pulled the screwdriver out of her neck, everything goes to pieces. “Disinfect,” the old Vuvalini instructs Cheedo tersely. “Bandage.” She does not look at Furiosa.

Cheedo is doing her level best to mediate, to please everyone and smooth out the impossible ruts, but her hands shake as she dabs stinging alcohol on the wound. “You’re so lucky,” she breathes. One finger lightly brushes the skin immediately to the side of Furiosa’s wound. “Your carotid is here-”

It’s hard to swallow and hard to breathe, the swelling hot and urgent in the back of her throat. “Don’t,” Furiosa croaks. 

“But you could have-”

“ _ Don’t. _ ”

Max lurches out of the room, his face gray and twisted, and she hears him vomit into the drainage grate in the hallway. He does not come back in. 

She feels sick, too, empty nausea billowing up in the wake of the adrenaline surge. “Can I give you something for the pain?” Cheedo asks quietly. 

“No.” Talking hurts less than movement, but suddenly she’s chilled down to her marrow, and every obstacle between her and a nest of blankets is an impossible vexation. “‘M fine.”

“I can give you something. There was a whole box of ibuprofen in the Bone Shop stash, Mari says it’s probably still good, it can at least take the edge off-”

Her refusal is a single gutteral grunt, but it’s harsh enough that Cheedo actually gulps. “Please drink this,” she manages, pressing a clay mug into Furiosa’s human hand. 

The mixture is green and strong, the latest version of Mari’s antibiotic concoction. The texture is vaguely oily, and it clings to her mouth. Hidden in the taste is the sense of suffocation, of disconnected panic, of a battle she doesn’t quite remember.

It’s almost impossible to swallow, and the only reason she doesn’t throw up is because it would be even more painful. 

“You should sleep.” Furiosa realizes the Cheedo is edging away, her body language screaming out discomfort. “Please go sleep.”

Cheedo is afraid of her. Cheedo is doing her job, deftly tucking the ends of the bandage into place, but she’s doing it with the trapped distress of a Wife going to a breeding.

Furiosa stomach clenches painfully. There’s still blood on her human hand, blood clotted in the joints of her prosthesis, and she wants to hide it, but it’s too late. She wants to explain, wants to say something,  _ anything _ , to erase the way Cheedo is looking at her, but even if her throat wasn’t knotted in pain, she can’t even begin to assemble the words that could explain. 

This was  _ for _ Cheedo. This was for all of them. She has to protect her authority so she can protect the girls, and mothers,  _ don’t they understand that? _ The energy surges up raw and dangerous, frustration so deep it pours out like clinging, tainted oil, ready to ignite and burn and burn and burn until there is nothing left. 

The thought crosses her mind that she could escape right now, could easily overpower Cheedo, just snap her neck and-

“Go,” Furiosa makes herself say, her ruined voice barely a croak. “Get.” The violence is suddenly terrifying, like she’s hurtling toward the edge of a cliff with her brakelines shredded and useless. It prickles in her muscles like electricity, looking for an exit that doesn’t exist. 

Cheedo stiffens, but stands her ground, a veteran of a war she shouldn’t even know how to fight. “Can I get someone?” she asks, her voice calm in a way that Furiosa recognizes, the overly-controlled tone an attempt to pacify. 

All the air is gone from her lungs, and more than anything, she needs to get the blood off her hands. She needs to wash, needs to clean herself before anyone else sees her, before anyone else looks at her the way Cheedo is. She lurches to her feet, a fever-bright memory of another time she’d pushed the girl - she’s a threat, she’s a  _ threat _ , she brought Cheedo here, paid her father for her virginity, she’s worse than a vehicle, she’s a slaver herself-

She doesn’t know where she’s going, only that if she doesn’t move, she’s going to explode. She has to keep moving, has to keep the wind in her intake or the whole engine will be airborne. Her fuel lines are burning, blazing through her veins, and she searches desperately for the feel of Max in her blood, his calming influence, the steadiness of his hands. 

She had to do it, she  _ had _ to-

“Don’t you  _ dare _ walk away,” Capable warns, and Furiosa is abruptly snapped back into herself. They’re in one of the hallways near the dormitories. There’s a lantern in Capable’s hand, the orange glow setting her hair alight. 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Capable demands, her voice shaking. “Go ahead. Tell me what happened. Tell me what the  _ fuck _ you were thinking.”

Fury and fire boil in her chest, superheated gas filling her lungs and throat. She needs to get out, she needs to get  _ out _ -

“I  _ said _ , don’t you fucking dare-” growls Capable, grabbing at her arm, and Furiosa is so keyed up that it just happens. Muscles clench -  _ you think a goanna thinks before it strikes? -  _ and Capable is on the ground, the lantern shattered and oil licking up in bright angry flames. 

She doesn’t have control. She can’t feel anything, but she’s  _ hitting _ her, there’s blood on Capable’s face -  _ mothers,  _ make it stop, make it  _ stop _ \- and then Capable  _ kicks _ , her big booted foot hitting Furiosa square in the chest. 

All the air is burning, soot and sparks in her eyes and hair and mouth and nose-

When she comes back to herself, coughing and gasping, spitting blood and tears streaming down her face, Capable is standing over her, part of the broken lantern chimney raised and ready to strike. 

The younger woman is incandescent, her eyes gone red and flooded with furious tears. “You shouldn’t have killed him! You shouldn’t - his brother just died, and you just fucking slit his throat-”

Furiosa coughs painfully, her heart hammering in her ribs. “He attacked,” she manages.

“He was grieving!”

“He  _ attacked _ .”

“You didn’t have to kill him! Why couldn’t you have-” she swings her arms through the air, gesturing with the shard of lantern, “- I don’t know, just knocked him down, gotten him in a headlock, done something non-lethal-”

The notion is so hysterically ridiculous that she wheezes a laugh. “He tried to kill me!”

“Well, you didn’t have to kill him back!”

“I don’t have any other option!”

“You always have another option!” Capable howls in impotent rage, and hurls the lantern shard at the wall, where it bursts into a cascade of glass. “You agreed - you  _ agreed _ \- no unnecessary killing, but you don’t even  _ think- _ ”

“I didn’t have  _ time _ -”

“Then you fucking make time. Angharad said-”

Her head is pounding. “Angharad was wrong.”

“You  _ agreed _ with her!”

Is this really something they’re going to debate? Furiosa closes her eyes. “I needed her to trust me!”

“So you  _ lied _ ?” Capable shakes her head, incredulous. “All this time, we’re still just a way to ‘get back at Joe’?” She suddenly goes very still. “Angharad died, and you didn’t turn around.”

Cheedo looked at her in fear, and Capable is looking at her now with contempt and disbelief. “You agreed, no unnecessary killing,” Capable says, her voice dangerously calm. “Was Angharad necessary, Furiosa?” 

Angharad was an accident. It was an  _ accident _ . Out of all of them, Angharad was the leader, the high-value prisoner, the instigator and hostage. She opens her mouth, but the truth flickers like Gastown’s oil towers in the distance, and she can’t find the words to explain. Angharad was supposed to be the leader, she was supposed to enter the Green Place like a queen, and Furiosa didn’t have any plans beyond that because the future was such a foreign concept, she’d never even  _ bothered _ to think that far before Angharad started needling her. Past escape attempts had been no more planned than a rabbit bolting for its hole, the reaction of fast-twitch muscle fibers to the proximity of an imagined safe haven. 

“How many other deaths are necessary, Furiosa?” Capable asks. “Do you even know?”

That lights the powder, because Capable is looking at her like she’s a murderer, and she  _ is _ \- she has no illusions to the contrary - but Capable’s judgement comes down from a moral throne built with the bones of the dead. “It’s  _ always  _ necessary!” Furiosa snaps, every nerve a blaze of fire. “It’s always necessary, because they will kill you if you don’t kill them first. No hesitation, no restraint, no mercy!” 

“That’s Joe talking,” retorts Capable coldly. “Miro was one of us. He deserved your mercy.”

“He chose his death!”

“ _ You _ chose it for him!”

“I reacted!” She is naked flesh, the skin flayed from her body. Every breath is searing,, every movement an explosion of fresh agony. “When is a death necessary, Capable?” She is teetering on the knife-sharp edge of chaos, the adrenaline in her body like nitrous in a cracked engine. There’s too much pressure in her head, too much force in her pistons and nowhere direct the energy. “Well?”

Capable hesitates, and Furiosa feels a hot bloom of self-righteousness, a second wind that blows her pistons wide open. “That hesitation -  _ that  _ right there. You’d be dead. You can’t hesitate. One second of doubt and your enemy has killed you, don’t you get that?”

“There’s no mercy without hesitation,” Capable snaps. “We aren’t animals. We think about what we do.”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of that,” Furiosa retorts. 

“It’s not a luxury! It’s a  _ fact _ ! You may not have an army of War Boys doing your bidding anymore, but you’ve got  _ us _ !” She throw an arm out, encompassing the entire Citadel. “Or are we not good enough for you? Is that it?”

Her brain skips like a gear with a broken tooth. Is that what Capable thinks? That Furiosa would rather be surrounded by the people who stole her, who killed her mother, who buzzed her flanks like rabid Buzzards? The ones who took her body and wrung all use from it, cast her aside and then praised her like a favored dog when she dared to fight back?

Capable is still talking. “You have  _ us _ -”

The words are torn from Furiosa’s throat, the raw wail of an abandoned, unarmed girl: “ _ I didn't have anyone! _ ”

“Now you do!” Capable yells. “We’ve been here the entire time, but you keep pushing us away! You can’t have anyone if you don’t let people help you! Just once, just  _ once, _ let us have your joe-damned  _ back _ !”

They stand there, breathing heavily, Furiosa's heartbeat hard in the meat of her tongue and lightheaded stars dancing erratically at the corners of her vision.

“I don't - it’s...hard,” she manages. 

“That's obvious,” Capable spits. “Two hundred days, and the only person you'll talk to is the one who fucking  _ left _ .” Her face softens. “I was  _ so scared _ today,” she admits, hugging herself and raising red and swollen eyes to the ceiling. “You just - we need you so much, Furiosa,  _ so much _ , and I don't know what we would do without you. You know that,  I  _ know _ you know that, because you keep taking it on, you - you use yourself to shield us, but...we need you alive more than we need your protection. We need  _ you _ . Not as a weapon, not as a warrior.” She moves to look Furiosa in the eye. “We need you as a mother.”

Her chest feels like it did when she was drowning in her own sputum, overfull and yet cavernously empty with the ache for air, her pulse stuttering black against her eyes. She has trained her crew. She’s trained Pups. She’s given counsel when it was asked, provided support when needed, but every moment, every heartbeat, she’s always,  _ always _ been cognizant of how her own knowledge can be used against her. She has  _ never _ taught more than the bare minimum, never adjusted the grip of a new War Boy without wondering when he might use that skill to take her down. Her strength and size are limited by biology, and she’s had to compensate with speed and cunning and sheer ruthlessness, and by never for one instant forgetting that every single person around her, from the littlest Pup to the War Boys on her crew to the other Imperators to the Immortan himself could potentially be her end. 

She - she feels like she’s fond of the girls, that when she considers them the odd warmth in her chest might be labelled affection. She’s held it at arm’s length, kept it in her periphery but avoided looking directly at it because she knows, she  _ knows _ that if she looks directly at it, she’ll be struck utterly blind. 

She knew that before Max, and now...now she’s terrified of letting go and becoming him, of becoming the sort of person who can only speak of his loved ones in a death rattle. 

“I can’t ask you for something you can’t give,” Capable says quietly. “I know that. But I can tell you that you have to take care of yourself, because we can’t make it without you, and  _ you _ -” her jaw twitches, “you can’t make it without us.”

Furiosa shakes her head reflexively, swallowing hard against the burning ash in her throat. 

“That’s not an argument,” Capable says. “That’s a statement.” She shakes her head. “If you get killed on this stupid run to the Bullet Farm-”

The words come out thick and clotted. “If it’s necessary-”

Capable’s eyes flash. “ _ No _ death is necessary-”

“All deaths are necessary.” She’s shaking so hard that not even tucking her human hand into her armpit can disguise it. 

“All deaths are unnecessary,” Capable says firmly, and then gently, so quietly she can barely be heard: “Your mother’s was. Katie’s was.”

Her heart spasms in her chest. “We keep moving.”

There’s a long pause, Capable studying her. “You make me so mad,” she finally says. “If I didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t be so easy to hate you.”

“You  _ should _ hate me.” 

A small, sad smile quirks at Capable’s lips. “That’s why I don’t,” she murmurs. “I never have.”

Furiosa can’t move, the air in her lungs too huge and heavy. She stays paralyzed for a long time after Capable walks away. 


	138. Chapter 138

She is so tightly wound that when he appears at her shoulder, it’s only his quick reflexes that keep him from getting punched. In the last flickers of light from the broken lamp, he looks like a shadow, absent one second and present the next. He twitches in the darkness, the whites of his eyes moving as he watches something just over her shoulder. 

She is suddenly aware of the smell of her own sweat, pungent with stress and rough with the rust of blood.

They go back to her room. It’s in shambles, the ruined aftermath of her moment of lost control the night before. She’s still buzzing with misdirected energy, bright, shuddery flares like an out-of-control oil fire. Without speaking, she starts collecting the shattered pieces of wood from the chair and the table, and Max begins to untangle the mess of blankets. 

This was once her safe place, this tiny stone cell with four stone walls and the high, narrow window. She’d kept it immaculate, brushing any intruding sand into a bucket for disposal. She’d been safe here, safe to scream in her nightmares and howl in her rage, safe to grieve for the loss of her arm and for the hope she’d had of escape. 

She feels like an egg that’s been cracked open, the barren yolk spilling wasted on the floor. Pistons can be repaired, cylinders refurbished. Once, she’d spent her private moments in this room refining her arm or lying in the sleeping alcove, her mind carefully blank. Now, her human hand is shaking and there’s a cavernous pain in her chest, and these walls feel more like a prison than the Vault ever did. 

Capable is right and Capable is  _ wrong _ , but Furiosa is  _ trying _ , and she is a violent, gushing flood of blood and oil. The harder she tries, the more out of tune she slips, and now her bolts are slipping free from stripped sockets. Mari said that sunshine was the best cure, but the human parts of her are blistered, swollen and peeling. 

Her neck hurts, a throbbing, layered ache that feels - abruptly - inappropriately distant. 

Mari’s  _ drugged  _ her. 

She’d tasted the bitterness, and thought it was just a new herb, but it wasn’t, and now it’s spreading like a slow fog. She’s always so  _ careful _ , but she hadn’t even questioned - 

Furiosa is just revving up to be thunderously angry, when she sees it: sometime during her feral rage, she’d knocked over her little potted plant. 

The plant is broken, its fragile green stem snapped off at the dirt. The tiny leaves, hard won against neglect and violence, are limp and starting to crisp. Max gently picks up the stem and puts it in a little plastic cup. He fills it up with water, and sets by the window.

“Cutting like that, it’ll, mm. Get new roots,” he says absently, adjusting the sprout in the cup so it doesn’t slip below the surface.  

He is a statue carved in pain, the weariness of his face and the old hurt in his leg, but here he is, taking what’s broken and trying to make it right. He’s given her blood, choked out the names of his family, and at every moment offered her what she’s needed to heal. 

That first moment of contact, when she’d seen him tied to the front of Nux’s car, and thought absently,  _ poor bastard _ \- and now here he is, standing in her inner sanctum, his blood in her veins and his fingers gently prodding the tiny green thing. 

She’d given up on that plant the day she turned the wheel, but ever since she opened her room to him, he’s guarded it, petted it, wrung into it the last few drops of water from the cloth he’s used to wash his face, and the whole time, the effort has seemed unconscious. It doesn’t seem deliberate, the small care taken towards this one little plant, but it’s absolutely a chosen behavior, and the choice is so deep, so fundamental to who he is, that she absolutely certain he doesn’t even know he’s made it. 

“I cut it off,” she blurts out. 

He blinks, peering at the plant until the meaning sinks in, and his whole body reacts in a cascade, his spine jerking straight as if he’s been pulled by a harness. His eyes are very blue and fixed on her, and she is suddenly dizzy and cold with sweat. 

She fangs it, letting the lightheaded rush of truth carry her forward. “It was a Bartertown run. I was driving pursuit. We made the run, but ran into trouble coming back. We got caught in a dust storm and lost the road half a day from the Citadel.”

He is very still, and she suddenly can’t look at him, can’t withstand the full weight of his attention. Her body feels like it’s floating behind her. “We went offroad, into a Buzzard trap. The lead went right into the pit, and the War Rig got snagged.” 

She can’t recall the details; she only knows the fragments that she’d pieced together once she got back to the Citadel. There was a crash. Her lancer was dead instantly - his head ended up on the floorboards by her feet, his body still in the perch at her rear. Her arm ended up pinned between the door and the steering column. 

Everything was on fire, whipped into a frenzy by the storm. 

“I had to get out,” she whispers. 

She never meant to go back to the Citadel; between the chaos of the storm and the blood loss, she just ended up driving the wrong direction. 

_ Now that I drive a War Rig, this is the best shot I’ll ever have. _

When she’d woken up in the Bone Shop, she’d been  _ sure _ it was a nightmare. When reality sank in - of all routes to take, she’d ended right back at the place she was running from - she’d had the wild, hysterical thought that she was never meant to escape, that fate itself had forged the chains binding her to the Citadel. 

Later, they told her she showed up alone, slumped over the wheel of the battered War Rig, cargo miraculously intact and a belt wrapped around her bloody stump. The other convoy vehicles straggled in two days later. 

“He gave me my chain for that.” Her face is suddenly prickling with heat. She’d been so  _ angry _ , that she’d sacrificed part of herself and he’d thought it was for  _ him _ . That she’d done it to protect his cargo, that she’d been prepared to give herself entirely to protect his property. She had cut off her own arm trying to escape, and he’d been  _ delighted _ . It had hit her then, that she could die and Joe would still praise her for her service. He owned everything from the water she drank to her barren womb and any potential contents, and even in her death she would never be free.

She could have murdered him, could have erupted like the fabled atomic weapons of Before, could have scorched the earth he’d stood upon and turned it to glass, rendering it unfit for living things for the rest of time. Instead, she’d been so weak with fever she could barely raise her head. 

She let the fever sterilize her. She had a War Rig, but she’d lost an arm, and the phantom cramps woke her every night, the flames licking behind her eyes. It was easier to shut herself down, to wall off the pain and pretend it was her brain stem she’d amputated. She breathed and pissed and ate and shat, but she was just another component in Joe’s garage, a creature made of rubber and steel with no soul of its own. She’d kept moving like that until Angharad stepped in front of her and forcefully declared Furiosa’s humanity. 

And then there’s Max. 

He’s standing there, listening, waiting, as patient as a stone. She’s waiting for some sign of judgement on his broad face, but there’s none, just a fine network of sympathetic lines around his eyes. 

Finally, he twitches, as if he’s just coming awake. “...Still hurt?”

“Sometimes,” she admits. 

He nods thoughtfully. 

Whatever Mari put in the medicinal tea is starting to work, a loose-limbed warmth spreading outward from her belly. It makes her bold, but she can’t say what she’s thinking. All the words she’d use are clotted together in her throat, a throbbing mass she can’t swallow back and can’t vomit out. Her mouth is suddenly bone-dry and swelling for the want of him. She is suffocating, her entire body shaking with the need to focus, to  _ feel _ , to bring warmth and light and heat into the endless dark between her lungs. 

What she can’t say, she can at least attempt to show him. 

She kisses him, long and hard. There’s a rough creak of leather as his mouth opens beneath hers, his hands coming up to cup the sides of her face. 

He drags himself away, lips kiss-swollen and damp. “...your neck?”

It hurts. It hurts, but the drugs are buzzing in her head, and the pain of the injury is a distant ache compared to the cavern that’s opened up in her chest, and the heat that’s pooling between her legs. “...I need you,” she rasps, her human hand fisting in his shirt. 

He stares at her, his face a strange cloud of emotions she can’t quite identify. 

“Fool,” she prompts, and he huffs, the ghost of what might be a chuckle lost as he brings his mouth back to hers. 

They kiss until they’re both breathless and staggering, and she pulls him down into the mound of blankets on the floor. She picks at the laces on his trousers with her human hand, the leather ties straining against his erection as he palms one of her breasts. 

“You sure?” he mumbles against her lips. 

It’s perhaps the only thing she’s sure of. 

They fuck slowly, languidly, holding back from the urgency that’s building up between them. It becomes a game, every thrust painfully drawn out, the long slide as he withdraws, taking all the air from her lungs as he does. It’s a delicious agony, and when she wraps her arms around the comforting thickness of his torso, the weight of him steadies her against the spin of the room. 

She spills over the edge before she even realizes she’s coming, the orgasm shattering over her like a broken windshield. Max is only half a breath behind, with a violent spasm and a strangled cry. In the damp silence, she drifts bonelessly, sparks dancing behind her eyelids.

She must whimper when he eases himself out, because he pulls the blankets over them both and she feels his lips touch her forehead. “Sleep,” he says, and despite herself, she does. 


	139. Chapter 139

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this - the holidays kicked my ass, and it's _stayed_ kicked, and I'm doing some hard-core wrangling to even GET an appointment with my pdoc, so...no end in sight. I'm okay, just more a couch-lump than the usual three-golden-retrievers-in-a-trenchcoat.
> 
> But I'm here. I haven't forgotten y'all. <3

Once, he’d seen time as a linear thing, a straight line from past to future with the present firmly in between. He’d been born and he’d grown, he’d met Jessie and married her, and together in the dunes they’d made Sprog. Despite his creeping doubt in his ability to keep his hands clean as the world kept falling to pieces around his little family, he’d still believed the future would be a destination, a place he could get to if he planned his journey right. 

He doesn’t know when it changed - or, if it didn’t change, he doesn’t know when he realized he was wrong - but time is a sandstorm, a thick cloud that obscures everything but the single, solitary moment of the present. It scrubs away any footprints he leaves and hides the sky so he can’t navigate the way he was taught. He is an ageless, nameless creature trudging slowly beneath a sun he can’t see.

Not nameless. Not quite. His name has been on her lips. If death happens when a man’s name is spoken for the last time, somehow, she’s resurrected him. 

She’s sleeping now, her breath whistling in her injured throat in a way that tears at the pink, tender parts of him. It reminds him of that day in the Gigahorse, the way panic surged through his body like a vapor fire. He has the musky damp of her on his fingers, but his hands remember the slide of the knife through her skin. She’d gasped as she clenched around him, but he remembers how she’d gasped when he’d opened her lung to the air. 

It’s jumbled in his head, the pleasure and the pain, the disbelief and the fear, and for a moment he’s sure he’s going to be sick again. 

_ You keep moving _ . But he doesn’t know how many more close calls they can have. Luck in the Wasteland is a scarcer commodity than water, something even less able to be contained within the bowl of his shaking hands.  

Later, when the sky is pale as mothers’ milk and the desert a creamy wash stretching out beneath, he wakes from a fitful doze. She stands in front of her little shard of mirror, peering at her reflection with a critical eye.  

It’s not his decision, because it’s not his choice - he has control over only the barest handful of things in his life, and Furiosa’s hair is not one of them - but there’s still a pang in his chest as she decisively starts to shear off the thick mass of loose curls she’s grown in the days since she turned her wheel. Max watches her, following the movement of her hands, the trajectory of the sand-colored curls to the ground. 

“Mm, let me,” he hears himself say when she’s down to patchy fuzz, and she hands him the knife, settling between his knees as he palms her scalp. He moves the blade gently, reverently, the heat of her freshly shaved skin calm and steady beneath his hand. 

When it’s done, she looks skeletal, especially with the bandage around her neck; the bruised hollows of her cheeks and eyes are almost comically stark. He doesn’t like it - it makes her look fragile, unfed, too much like one of the half-life War Boys he’d been shackled and drained to save. In the days since they first reclaimed the Citadel, he’d forgotten how much she’d once looked liked that. 

“The arm,” she croaks, considering the prosthesis. A bald head might bring her a degree of anonymity, but her mechanical arm is her hallmark; even a thousand meters away, it’s unmistakable. 

He shrugs. “Could wrap it up?” It would be bulky, but...perhaps less suspicious?

She frowns, her knees popping as she leverages herself to her feet. “They’d search it. I’ll have to use the other one.” She fishes it out of the wreck of the table, a crude prototype with a single unmoving hook. It’s utterly unremarkable, nowhere near as effective or as elegant as the one gifted by the Repair Boys. 

“Won’t they know?”

She shakes her head. “They’re used to powder cooks. Half the Bullet Farmers are missing fingers or hands.”

The explosion flares in his mind, the flash momentarily blinding, and he rocks a little with the memory of the shockwave. He clenches his fists against his thighs, shaking with the urge to grab her and  _ run _ , to bundle her up and drive. 

She’s staring at him now, her eyes flat and green like a faded photograph of distant hills. The grass in the dunes by the beach house had been tenacious and, liable to slice through wayward skin, the cuts so thin and deep they barely bled. 

Furiosa stays. It was never a question. 

He makes himself lean in, breathing in the heady musk of her, the smell of sex and his own body intermingled on her skin. It settles into his stomach like alcohol, solid and warm. Her human fingers brush the back of his head briefly. “It’s light,” she says. “They’ll be waiting.”

He doesn’t want this. He aggressively wants anything but this. His bowels are a watery, festering pit of anxious pain, a buzzing lightness tugging at the back of his skull. He can only breathe when she’s touching him, and every nerve in his body is screaming in alarm. The lizard part of his brain is mewling in fear, the shadows of the dead flickering at the edge of his sight. 

“Hey,” she says, and then she’s kissing him, her mouth warm against his own. It’s sweet and hard, like the bones of her hips, and for one brief second, something inside of him unclenches. 


	140. Chapter 140

It’s early even for those prone to rising with the sun, but when Max and Furiosa walk into the dining hall, Jilly meets them with a plate of warm seedcakes and a frown. “Damn stupid, if you ask me,” she mutters, and he sees the ripple of movement across Furiosa’s shoulders as she swallows back the instinct to respond. 

The Actuary is already seated at one of the communal tables, the girls and Mari around him, a small pot of one of Dag’s herbal salves at his elbow. He’s rubbing the pungent goo into his hands, taking care with the webs of his fingers and the beds of his nails. He looks Furiosa over, giving her an expressionless nod of approval. 

“You cut your hair!” Cheedo wails, and then claps a hand over mouth shut with a fearful glance at Capable. 

“They would have recognized her,” the Actuary notes, taking another scoop of salve and swiping it across the bridge of his wide nose. 

Capable has a swollen lip and a large bruise blooming on her cheek. “She’ll do whatever it takes,” she mutters over the ledger laid out in front of her. Louder, she adds, “Toast is checking the rig. It’s almost full.”

“It looks...practical,” Cheedo offers gamely. “Your hair.”

Mari purses her lips. “Looks like one of those skeleton boys, it does.” She motions to Furiosa. “Come here; my knee’s not awake yet.”

Max settles warily into a spot at the table and stretches his cheeks around a seedcake. Furiosa sits beside Mari and stiffly allows the Vuvalini to gently examine her neck. 

“This is still fresh,” Mari reminds her, as if Furiosa doesn’t know. “Don’t tear my stitches out, or it’ll be worse.”

He thinks of the pale brown curls, how they felt around his fingers, how they looked shorn on the ground. The seedcake feels like salt and mud in his mouth. 

“We make the run as usual,” Furiosa says. Her voice is hoarse, but her back is straight, her eyes hard. She glances at the Actuary, her shoulders turning with her gaze. “What is your plan for your own return?”

He inclines his head. “You may drop me anywhere you wish once we are beyond the moat. I am not well-known.” He pauses. “There is an eighty-four percent chance I will be able to return to my office unmolested.”

“The invisible hand,” Capable says quietly. “You control Gastown from the shadows.”

His eyes are flat, unblinking. “I control nothing. I state the probabilities, that is all.”

Cheedo fishes a small metal container from her pocket. “Here, we made you this,” she says, pushing it across the table toward Furiosa, an offering not unlike that of a child. “It’ll be better than Gastown’s. It won’t be as harsh.”

Max can smell it before Furiosa even opens the little pot: sulfur, with strong undertones of the various medicinal oils and unguents Mari and Cheedo concoct. It’s a thoughtful gift - he’s used the yellow paint himself when infiltrating Gastown for his own purposes, and on the novice wearer, it burns the top layer of skin away faster than the harsh sun. 

Furiosa’s face is carefully blank. “Thank you.”. 

“We want to recognize you when you come back,” Mari adds, raising an eyebrow to emphasize the word  _ when _ . 

He can see the muscles in her neck cording with tension. “We need to go,” Furiosa croaks. 

“No, we don’t  _ need  _ to,” Capable grumbles, “but you’re going to go regardless. Wait for Toast.”

“No waiting,” Toast says, coming into the room at that moment. She snags a seedcake from the plate but doesn’t sit. “Nice hack job, Furi. You look like hell.”

“The tanker?” Furiosa asks. 

“Full. Crew’s ready. Ello’s on point, I’m driving back. We go when you say.”

He walks behind her, caught in the swaying of her hips as if in a trance. There is no gentleness in her step, no hesitation. The line of her back is as straight as the Last Road, drawing his eyes up to the brand at the nape of her neck. Nothing in the Wasteland is left unscathed, untouched, unscarred. For so long he’d thought himself set apart from all that, a being that skirted the edges of the world, ducking into the dregs of civilization only out of gravest need. 

He has the same brand. He is not special, he is not extraordinary in his detachment. He has only been denying himself the one thing that makes survival a journey instead of a goal. 

“Fool,” she says quietly, the word pitched for his ears only, and despite himself, he feels the glow of connection warm in his belly. 

 

****

The garage has always been a safe haven of sorts, a place where all black thumbs are made equal amid grease and the thick, sweet smell of guzzoline, but Furiosa’s heart is still pounding. She breathes carefully through her nose, the heavy odor of the yellow paint filling her head. She’s dressed as a Gastown War Boy, a gas hood hanging from her waist. 

This place used to be a refuge, in the way that the Vault itself was a refuge, but now it’s filled with staring Rock Riders, and off to one side, the last surviving Vuvalini. 

Val leans on her motorcycle, her thick hair in a messy pile at her nape, a spanner in her hand. Her eyes are cold, calculating, until recognition hits, and then her entire body straightens. 

_ “Addie needs you here,” Katie says. “Those rabbits en’t gonna skin themselves.” _

_ “But I wanna  _ go _ ,” Val whines.  _

_ “Please?” Furiosa echoes. “It’s better when she’s with me, I have better balance-” _

_ “Which is exactly why you’re going alone,” Katie interrupts. _

Strange how she feels like she’s spinning out of control, when once Val was her counterweight. 

Val says nothing, her eyes flicking across Furiosa’s painted skin, down her salvaged Gastown shirt and trousers, to her rough, makeshift prosthesis. Furiosa can’t read anything on her face. 

If she were braver, she’d go up and press her forehead to Val’s, inhale the warm musk of her like dry wood under a kinder sun, but her throat hurts, and the garage is suddenly a strange, liminal place. Furiosa is wearing the skin of someone else, the paint of another allegiance. She isn’t who she was born to be, nor who she was forced to become. She’s back to being a vehicle, a driver for another master. She’s a charade, wrapped in borrowed rags and duplicitous paint. 

Furiosa can’t make herself go to Val, and Val seems to know. 

“We’re ready to ride,” Raygear says, coming up beside her. “We will be waiting on the far side of the dunes.”

“You better get them as good as you got us,” Wilgee mutters. “Won’t lose people we have over water we don’t.”

There are flares tucked into Furiosa’s belt. If needed, she’ll send them up, and Max will lead the others to her aid. She has no idea what to expect, if there will be ten armed War Boys or a hundred, but she has to find out. Once, she’d tried to escape the Citadel in a storm; now, she’s prepared to call a storm in its aid. 

Furiosa is just peering into the rig’s engine to confirm that Keno’s fix on the coolant hoses is still holding when the ambient noise abruptly trails off. It’s not a quiet place, with the pounding of tools and the chatter of Repair Boys, but it’s gone dead quiet, and when she turns, she sees Dag standing in the doorway, bundled in a Vuvalini quilt with the baby bound against her chest. In one hand she’s holding a wooden bowl. 

The War Boys drop what they’re doing as if Immortan Joe himself had stepped into view. It’s no secret as to the baby’s parentage - Dag was a Wife, there’s no mystery there - but oddly, this is not for the infant, it’s for the mother herself. 

“Welcome,” Toast calls, her voice teasing. “Are we taking the baby for trade, then?”

The Actuary suddenly looks  _ very _ interested.

“Wouldn’t get anything for this one,” Dag says dismissively. “Not even as meat. Mari says she’s too thin.”

“We are  _ not _ trading her,” Capable flares. “We are not things-”

“Hold her, then,” Dag interjects, and like flipping a switch, Capable’s whole demeanor changes, goes simultaneously tender and fierce, and she reaches out to take the infant in her arms. 

“Gonna mark us?” Riz asks hopefully and then stifles a cough as Spade elbows him in the ribs. 

“Miss Giddy said symbols have power,” the former Wife says, and shrugs, suddenly self-conscious. “Can’t do much from here but pray-”

“It’s perfect,” Capable assures her, jiggling the baby. “It’s fine, Dag.”

The War Boys are all wearing fresh white paint, and the three stripes of green shows up stark and bright. “One for each tower,” Dag reminds them. 

“Green for growing,” intones Klash. None of them look at Furiosa, as if by not meeting her gaze they can somehow account for Miro’s absence. 

She wants to regret what she’s done, but she  _ doesn’t _ . Her throat aches and her neck is stiff, but she’s alive. 

_ Do whatever it takes.  _

When the War Boys are marked, and the rig duly painted, and even Max has grudgingly accepted the lines, Dag comes to a stop in front of Furiosa. 

“Cheedo told me what you said last night,” she says, drawing three green lines down the center of Furiosa’s forehead before she can duck away. 

“I’ll have a mask on.” There’s no point to marking. She’s already risking a lot just having her own body, its unmistakable feminine shape. She’d considered binding her breasts, but curvy War Boys aren’t unheard of, and she can’t risk passing out. “I can’t let them see any of this.”

“I’m not marking you for them,” Dag replies absently, dabbing at one of the lines to get it just so. “You don’t think you’re one of us. You’re wrong.”

“You’ve always been one of us,” Capable adds, coming up with Cheedo at her elbow. She shifts the baby in her arms. “It’s not for you to decide that you aren’t.”

“You declared your allegiance when you helped us escape,” Cheedo says.

Toast nods, wiping grease from her hands. “No takebacks.” 

“If you can just stop  _ murdering people- _ ”

“You promised!” Cheedo hisses. “Capable, you promised you wouldn’t say anything!”

Capable shuts her mouth with an audible click of teeth, and Toast interjects, “Look, we’re all in this together. It was never going to be easy, but we’re half a year into this. We can’t give up now.”

“We keep moving,” Dag says, and even though it’s impossible, her delivery of the words, her tone and cadence, are so much like that of Mary Jo Bassa that Furiosa’s heart stutters in her chest. For a moment, she can’t breathe, and Dag’s eyes are suddenly not her own. 

“This is Heirloom,” Dag adds, more normally and seemingly apropos of nothing, and Furiosa doesn’t understand until Dag rolls her eyes and reaches over to cup the baby’s head with her palm, green-painted fingers splayed to avoid staining the little one’s delicate crown of wispy white hair. 

“Heirloom of Clan Boltcutter,” Cheedo says, leaning her head on Dag’s shoulder. “At least, until she’s old enough to choose for herself.”

“Boltcutter?” Comprehension bobs like a corpse at the surface of her mind, air-filled lungs unwilling to sink. 

With the tip of her pinky, Dag gently dabs three small green dots on the baby’s forehead. The infant scrunches up her nose, toothless gums bared in a squeak of annoyance. “You had Swaddle Dog,” Dag says reasonably. “This one’s got Boltcutter.”

It splashes over her like water, like a sudden deluge from a looming sky. “We asked Mari and Amy about Vuvalini traditions,” Cheedo goes on. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Dag gives Cheedo’s head a gentle bump with her shoulder. “And Cheedo has a question for you,” she prompts.

“Now?” Toast says. “Is now the best-”

“Now,” Dag says firmly. She looks around at her sisters, and Capable’s lips go thin, but she nods. 

Furiosa can see it in their eyes. They’re afraid she’s going to do something stupid, that she’s not coming back. The words claw their way out of her damaged throat. “What is it?” 

“I want to be Mari’s initiate,” Cheedo bursts out. “And I want you to stand with me,” she goes on in a rush. “I asked her and she said there’s a ceremony where the initiate formally asks, and it’s witnessed by both the initiate mother and the birth mother, but my mama’s dead, and there isn’t really anyone else, and I don’t care what you said, I  _ want _ it to be you...if you want,” she finishes. “I mean. If you’re willing.”

Cheedo. Cheedo the Fragile, the girl who’d cried to go back to Joe, Before-time lip paint smeared across her face like blood. Cheedo, who’d connected with Mari when no one else had, who had bloomed under the old Vuvalini’s tutelage and saved Furiosa’s life with her ministrations. Cheedo, who should be afraid of her - they  _ all _ should be afraid of her, and they aren’t, they  _ aren’t _ , they’re standing in front of her, arms linked in solidarity. She’s stolen them, lied to them, and Capable’s face is dark with fresh bruises from Furiosa’s own blows, but they’re still standing here, a united front.

“You don’t get to say no,” Toast points out, one eyebrow arched in what may actually be a threat. 

The hard lump in her throat has nothing to do with Miro’s screwdriver. It seems so...unfair. She doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve their loyalty, their kindness. She’s done nothing to earn it. They are the next generation of Vuvalini; that is undeniable, the  _ next  _ next generation - Heirloom - already being raised up in their image. She just can’t fathom-

“Time is of the essence,” the Actuary interjects, and Furiosa slams back into battle-mode. 

“If you need,” she says to Cheedo, and the girl is so elated she takes a skipping step to press her lips against Furiosa’s cheek. 

“That’s gonna taste gross,” Toast advises, as Cheedo exaggeratedly grimaces and wipes the sulfur paint from her mouth. 

At Furiosa’s signal, Ello cups his hands around his mouth. “Thunder up!” he calls out, a perfect Ace. “Today, we’re going to Gastown!” 


	141. Chapter 141

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go, folks!

The run to Gastown is uneventful, the vehicles in tight, careful formation. About halfway, Max turns sharply off the road, guiding his battered Interceptor into the dunes with a contingent of Rock Riders close behind. They move like predatory birds, disappearing into a cloud of dust long before their roar of their engines is absorbed by the waste. 

Gastown needs the water badly, and there is no posturing at the gate. The rig is waved into the garage, the tanker emptied and filled. In the yellow haze, Furiosa slips unseen from the cab, the Actuary at her elbow. She follows him as he winds around various tankers and tanks in various states of repair, up a catwalk, down a creaky metal stair, and into another bay.  

“This is the driver to the Bullet Farm,” he says without preamble to a nearby Gastown Imperator. 

The Imperator snorts behind his mask. “Fresh meat, then.” There is no recognition in his voice, nor does she recognize him, and Furiosa suddenly feels heady and anonymous. 

“It is in our interest for the driver to return,” the Actuary says, in a tone that could reasonably be described as mild. “Is the vehicle prepared?”

The Imperator nods. “The usual order, but you know they’ll bitch.”

“There has been no negotiation for an increase.” The Actuary turns to Furiosa. “Luck is an artificial construct for those whose probabilities are based on inadequate information.” 

She doesn’t know if that means he’s betting on her success, or on her failure. She knows without asking that he has contingencies for both. 

The Gastown tanker is in better shape than the Citadel’s patchwork rig, but she can tell from its stacks that it’s underpowered for its size and payload.. It’s large enough that it should have a crew of fifteen, but as she climbs into the seat and locks the wheel in place, no one follows her. 

“Ever drive a rig before?” the Gastown Imperator asks, arms crossed as he watches her check her gauges. 

She makes herself shrug.

He grins behind the mask, hidden behind painted-on teeth in a malicious rictus. “Gas, brake, it’s all the usual. Bring this one back, eh, and maybe you’ll get to drive it again.” He leans closer to the window. “Whatever you’ve been promised, fresh meat...it ain’t enough.”

She almost laughs in his face. Now she recognizes him, a lackluster lieutenant raised to authority above his ability. He doesn’t see beyond her stolen mask, beyond the yellow paint coating her exposed skin. His eyes drop to her makeshift prosthesis, and he chuckles. “Yeah, you shoulda gotten a better deal.”

She makes a big show of being hesitant behind the wheel, purposefully grinding the shifter with an exaggerated wince, and earns herself a chorus of mocking hoots from the blackthumbs. 

“Gotta handle it  _ gentle _ !”

“That’s a cunt, course she don’t know how to handle a gearstick-”

“Come back alive,  _ I’ll  _ show you how to handle it-”

She makes a gesture that is defiant but not overly inflammatory. They laugh. 

In the queue for the gate, Toast is driving the Citadel rig, the three green lines bright against her dark forehead. She sits behind the wheel like a queen from one of Miss Giddy’s old stories, as regal as Angharad ever was. The garage master gives Furiosa clearance to follow the Citadel crew out, and she nudges the rough engine forward. It whines against its heavy load, the rivets in the cab creaking with sympathy. 

Furiosa never gets to see her crew working like this, driving away from her. Toast is so small, utterly dwarfed by the massive machine and yet she is so calm. She was stolen from a passing convoy, and though Furiosa wasn’t there, she knows it was a hard fight. Despite being taken, Toast has never  _ lost _ , and she carries herself with the confidence of a victor. It’s an attitude that is both dangerous and protective. She has not had to fight like Furiosa has, but she’s also never needed to. 

Furiosa is suddenly, fiercely, seized by the conviction that no matter what happens, Toast will be fine, and by extension, so will the rest of the girls.  

Out of the gate, Furiosa eases the tanker down the bridge, over the thick, muddy pools of mottled, rainbow-slicked water. Half-buried in the moat are the corpses of cars that tried to bypass the bridge, and the corpses of the scavengers that tried for the salvage. If possible, the air is even worse, a shimmering miasma that claws at her throat and lungs even behind her mask. It’s a relief to be back on solid ground, even as she turns the tanker from the asphalt and into the crumbling ruts that mark the route to the Bullet Farm. The Citadel Rig speeds on, dust boiling in its wake as Toast fangs it for the safety of the three towers.

Furiosa has an escort for the first half-mile, two Gastown motorcycles that peel off at some invisible boundary that demarcates the Bullet Farm’s outer territory. In the near distance, the smoldering crater of the mine is a dark wound against the sand’s bright glare. 

Somewhere, hidden in the dunes, Max is waiting, just out of sight. The flares tucked into her belt are a comforting pressure against her skin. No matter what happens, she has backup. Even if they can’t make it to her, just knowing - just  _ trusting _ \- it’s a heady rush like the taste of sweet summer wine. 

_ Of course we came _ . 

Her throat aches, the screwdriver’s path a tight, aching knot of betrayal. 

She’s driven this route tens of times, knows that when the hills of spoil start to rise out of the sand, the engine will protest as she guides the rig up the slope. This one whines and bogs down, and she gently eases it into its lowest gear, the undersized transmission groaning as it struggles with the ascent. If she stops on the hill, there’s a strong chance she might not get started again, and The Bullet Farmers stationed at the first checkpoint must know, because instead of stopping her, they wave her past, guns raised as a reminder of their might.

She reaches the gates at the crest of the rise. The hulking, protective walls are carved from the earth itself, fortified with thousands of days of spoil, the stone dull gray, mottled with ochre brown and crusty white efflorescence. The air is heavy and smells like stale blood. 

“You’re overdue,” the bristling Farmer at the gate announces. Overhead, the elevated track’s metal members creak in the wind. 

“Citadel,” she shrugs, and the croak in her throat is more than enough to render her voice unrecognizable. 

“Not my problem,” the Farmer snaps. “Now - out.” He raises a hand, and the tanker is immediately swarmed, heavily armed men conducting as thorough an inspection as she’s ever seen. They tap along the side of the tanker, listening for the change in density between the chambers, and she has no doubt that if anything is found wanting, she will be shot. 

She should probably not find that fact comforting, but she knows these men - their type, if not their names - and knows exactly what to expect.  

She drops down from the cab, and lets them shove her against the bumper. One kicks her legs apart as another starts a bruising patdown, unsympathetic hands groping and prodding in a way that has nothing to do with a weapons search. “Heh, they sent a girl this time,” the one doing the search sneers, helping himself to a handful of breast and pinching hard at a nipple. 

“Shipment’s overdue,” the gatekeeper snarls. “Have your fun later.”

“I could drive the rig,” the groper drawls.

“Sure,” the second one says, “and while you’re drivin’, I’ll be the one getting me stick wet. Idiot.”

“Clean!” comes the call from the back. 

“Enough!” With her face pressed into cab’s dusty sidepanel, she can’t see what happens, but she hears the gatekeeper’s gun coming down and the pained thump as it connects with the groper’s ribs. “Get back in the cab,” the gatekeeper growls, and she doesn’t even pause to adjust her shirt. 

“Got that Citadel brand,” the second Farmer says, as his partner crouches in the dust gasping for breath. “Think the ‘Mortan might know her?”

“Not for us,” the gatekeeper says, and brings something from a pocket up to his mouth. There’s a sharp, melodic double-ping, like two different-caliber bullets dropped into a metal bowl. “We got incoming.”

Even from her perch in the cab, even though she can’t see the object, Furiosa somehow knows. She  _ knows _ . It’s Bartertown tech. It’s  _ forbidden _ tech. It’s clearly a communication device, and even though it’s mysterious, she knows such things exist like she knows about scopes and the iridescent green shards Joe had pinned to his chestplate. The gatekeeper is not flaunting the device, but he’s not being secretive about its use either. 

Apprehension crystallizes along her spine like creeping frost. The Buzzards had Before tech, mines and bullets and guns. Raygear had the broken scope, bright as a beetle despite its age. Max had said the Bullet Farm was arming the Buzzards, but she hadn’t believed it, not really, not until right at this moment. 

Why, she can’t fathom. The Buzzards are scavengers, opportunistic in their kills. Sometime after the world fell, they’d claimed the Buried City as their own, and dug themselves deeply into that tangled nest of steel and glass. They don’t mingle with outsiders, not when they don’t have to. They’ve come to the Amnesty, but not so often that they’re not a spectacle when they do arrive. 

Even putting aside the language barrier, she can’t think of why the Buzzards would make a deal, not with the Bullet Farm. As a rule they use machined bolts, not bullets, and makeshift claws for close-range combat. They do damage by ripping and tearing. There’s no shortage of metal in the Buried City, and they patrol the warren of tunnels in complete darkness, unconcerned about ambush or raid. There’s no point in assaulting the Buried City; it’s almost impervious, a seemingly limitless source of everything one might need to survive. She’s heard rumors they grow grubs in the darkness, on the corpses of their own dead. She’s heard that their vehicles run on alcohol, on rancid oil, on anything that will burn. They don’t make deals, they wait until darkness and  _ take.  _

If she’d had to wager what the Buzzards  _ would _ trade for, she’d have bet water it was guzzoline. 

“I said,  _ move _ ,” the gatekeeper snarls, punctuating the word with a sharp bang on her door with the butt of his gun. 

The engine coughs to life, and slowly, Furiosa guides the tanker down into the Bullet Farm’s gaping maw. 


	142. Chapter 142

The road is rough, lingering ruts made by the impossible rain cutting jagged cracks in the red earth. Furiosa keeps the engine in its lowest gear, but it’s almost not low enough; she can’t playact at incompetent driving anymore, not when the wheels are so close to slipping in the blowing sand and ash. She grits her teeth, her knuckles white on the wheel. The balance between gas and clutch is a thin, shifting line, and the road is bad enough that slipping or stalling might mean the tanker and its liquid load could easily overbalance, sending her tumbling to a fiery death in the deep pit below. There’s a small ridge of spoil between the road and the sharp downward slope, but she doesn’t trust it, doesn’t trust that it isn’t soft and ready to fall. 

_ Just once, let us have your back. _

She doesn’t have a plan, not really. She’s kept her mind carefully blank. A plan requires a decision, and she hasn’t made that decision yet. The cavernous, deviant part of her just wants to stomp on the brake and leap from the cab guns with blazing - anything to ease the awful tension twisting in her gut - but the Scabrous Scrotus cut his teeth on the walls of this place, and Furiosa would be dead before she even hit the ground. Even when she was thin and mean, she couldn’t have done it, and now she’s been infected with a softness she can’t make herself regret. 

Besides, she’s got three rounds in her pistol, and she’d be going up against firepower that is, in comparison, almost unlimited. She is keenly aware of her disadvantages; she needs to stay calm, assess the situation. She will not get a second chance. 

She’s going slow enough that five of the Farmers from the gate exert no effort as they amble along in her tracks. To her right, a handcar moves along the elevated railway at the crater’s rim, the gunner keeping the machine gun trained on her cab as a rag-wrapped worker mechanically pushes at the pump. 

The smelters rise on the far edge of the mine, twin smokestacks painted in grubby and flaking red and white stripes. One the towers leans precariously on its foundation, buildings around it leveled by an apparent explosion - Max’s. The holding pool at its base is ruined, its contents released in a copper-colored stain down the pit’s jagged walls. 

It’s been almost a thousand days since the time she was here. Once she was granted the War Rig, she’d been freed from lesser supply runs, but the carrion-stench of ore and desperation clings to her mouth and nose with a roiling familiarity. She hasn’t been here since she turned the wheel, since she shot the searchlight probing the darkness out in the bog. 

Not the bog. The Green Place. She’d been right through it and hadn’t recognized it. There had been no frisson of remembrance, no child-memory more sense than image. Those long hours in the Vault she’d spent dreaming of going home, and having it feel  _ right _ , the comfort of the shade of the twisted, gnarled coolibah trees. 

_ We keep moving _ . 

She has to keep moving, because time is a one-way path, the road falling away behind her.

She thinks of Max. She pictures him in the dunes, tucked down and just out of sight, waiting. He’s waiting for her, for her signal. He’s poised to charge over the edge, to ride the crest of the sand like the front edge of a storm. He doesn’t want to be there, but he  _ is _ there. 

Suddenly, she is very, very certain that she wants to be done. Capable had said it was okay to leave. It’s okay to  _ want  _ to leave, it’s okay to actually do it. Once this is over, she’s going to tell Capable - she’s going to tell her, and then she’s going to let Max take her. She’s going to go with him. It doesn’t matter where. They’ll find a car and they’ll just...go. Into the Waste, into the sunset, it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know how they’ll figure out the logistics, but she wants-

Freedom. 

Just her and Max and the open desert. She doesn’t know where he goes. She doesn’t know if he’s looking for something, or if he just...drifts. She should be alarmed by how little she knows about him, but...she’s not. His blood is in her veins, and when they sleep, he curls into the curve of her body like a lizard in a hollow. He sleeps with his back pressed against her, his face toward the door. 

She wants to be uninterrupted. She wants  _ time _ . She can fight for space, for supplies, for water, but time seems like an unimaginable luxury. She wants to drive Max into the desert and lay him down, to take him apart piece by piece and put him back together. She wants to see the hunger in his eyes and to taste him and to be greedy with his body and his time. She wants to go days and days without seeing another human, to drive endlessly with only the sharp, thick scent of him on her skin. 

He’d asked her once. “Let’s go,” he’d said, his voice hoarse from the strain of asking. And she’d  _ wanted _ . Every time she sees him, she wants. It feels like a breath she’s holding, a constant, silent, overwhelming ache, and she thinks that when this is over, she’s ready to actually breathe. 

It feels like hope. 

In the meantime, she still has to get through this. If she gets through this -  _ when _ she gets through this - she’ll have cleared the Citadel’s water debt and regained standing with Gastown. She’ll have forged an alliance with the Blood or eliminated them, and the Buzzards will lose their benefactor. Trade will start to flow again - bullets and water and guzzoline - and some semblance of Wasteland stability will be restored. 

It doesn’t feel real. It’s been two hundred and one days since she turned the wheel, and every second has been a hard slog. She doesn’t dare hope that this might be a turning point, but the possibility follows her like a shadow. 

She is so tired. Her throat aches, and the rudimentary prosthesis is poorly balanced, pulling at the muscles in her shoulder. 

Outside, the Bullet Farm’s caverous pit yawns below. 

By the time she eases the tanker into the final bumpy stretch, she’s acquired a large escort. It’s a motley mix of Bullet Farmers in their spiky armor and hollow-eyed miners. “Guz!” someone shouts, and the cry is taken up, callused palms beating a cadence on the side of the tank. “Guz! Guz! Guz!”

When she reaches the main building, the crowd abruptly disperses, scattering back into the pit or into makeshift hovels dug into the mounds of spoil. The smell of rot is thicker here, the thick chemical stench mingling with the sweeter notes of decaying flesh. 

“Hook it up!” bellows a Buller Farmer, and the others scramble to comply, dragging a thick hose from its coil beneath an elevated storage tank. The Farmer is one she doesn’t recognize - he’s missing half a leg, a length of steel pipe strapped tightly to his thigh. He pivots on the pipe, spearing Furiosa with a hard look. “Driver. You’re wanted inside.”

They search her again when she’s through the door. They take her pistol, laughing at her three meager bullets. “Wrong caliber,” one of the Farmers drawls as he feels her up. “Gonna melt your piece.”

She makes herself shrug. She didn’t have much of an option. She’d at least have a shot or two before the barrel exploded, and that was better than nothing. 

“Gastown,” sneers another. 

“Oi, hang on,” a third Farmer breaks in. She doesn’t recognize him, but he’s wearing the black scarf of an Imperator and the burning eyes of a youngster desperately new to power. He’s got his shotgun pointed at her, and he’s got enough presence of mind to stay just beyond her reach. He warily twitches the gun. “Take off the mask.”

She hesitates, not out of fear, but to see how far he’ll exert his authority. 

“I said  _ take it off! _ ”

He’s jumpy. The youngest snakes are the most poisonous, Katie had told her, because they don’t know how to save their poison. They panic and bite and drain themselves. The older ones won’t bite unless you give them no choice, and even then, you might not die. The young ones haven’t learned yet. Slowly, deliberately, she raises her human hand and unsnaps the buckle. 

Dag’s paint is still on her forehead, sharply green against the yellow sulfur paste. The Bullet Farm Imperator stares, and for several long breaths, nobody moves. 

“Citadel?” one of the others finally asks. “They send a Citadel spy?”

The Imperator’s eyes dart down to Furiosa’s makeshift prosthesis, and she sees the gears moving as he makes connections. “Citadel,” he breathes. “No arm...you stupid fucks, it’s the Bag of Nails!”

“Shit.  _ Shit! _ ” They all dance away like maggots on a hot pan, and Furiosa breathes through her nose, because her throat is raw and it will  _ hurt _ if she laughs at them. They’re barely old enough to have any adult muscle, the hot stink of adolescent sweat pungent around them. 

“Shit,” the second one says again. “Shit, what do we do?”

“Kill her!” the first yelps. “Should have killed her at the gate-”

“I’m here to talk,” Furiosa says calmly.

“Gastown fucked us,” the third insists. “Sent the goddamn Bag of Nails-”

“ _ Don’t _ move!” the Imperator snaps, his voice cracking in alarm. 

“I came to make a deal,” Furiosa tells him. “I’m here to talk to the Blood.”

“Fucking Blood don’t talk to nobody,” the third spits. 

She holds his gaze until he looks away. “Let the Blood make that decision. Take my weapon. I’m here to talk.”

“Shit. Shit.” The Imperator nervously picks at a scab on his bare scalp. “Okay. Sook, go tell ‘em. Nobody moves. She even blinks, she’s dead. Hear?”

The third Farmer darts away down the corridor. “You shouldn’t even  _ be _ here,” the Imperator tells Furiosa. “We said one driver!”

“I am one driver.”

“Shut up!” He waves the shotgun at her, and she swallows back another inappropriate laugh. “No talking. Don’t talk.”

The room is small. The shotgun isn’t close enough that she’ll lose a limb, but it will still do a substantial amount of damage. Her pistol is stashed in the Imperator’s casing-studded bandolier. Her throat hurts, a throbbing ache with each breath, and the prosthesis is heavy, unbalanced. On a good day, she might be able to take both the Imperator and the other Farmer, but a gunshot will alert everyone, and she’d be dead before she could even get out the door. 

This is not a place for blunt force. This is a place requiring finesse. She can finesse. 

She keeps her breathing even, and her arms where the Imperator can see them. Max is out there in the dunes, a small glowing coal, waiting for her signal. 

No matter what happens, the girls will be all right. 

Long moments pass. Outside, wind whistles through gaps in the brickwork wall. Without her mask, the air is heavy, the stench a physical weight in her lungs. Away from the tanker’s whining engine, the sounds of the mine echo up the slag walls, hammering and chipping and the shouts of the miners in the pit. 

“Are the smelters down?” she asks. 

“I said, shut up,” the Imperator snaps.

She wonders if Max’s explosion damaged the smelters, and how long it will take to get production up and running. She has no idea how he managed to even breach the gate. 

He is dangerous, and  _ stupid _ , and she wants to hold him down and fuck him until her name is the only noise he can make.  

The young Imperator is getting even twitchier by the time the other Bullet Farmer comes back, breathing hard like he’s run the whole way. “He says okay,” the Farmer gasps out. “He says bring her. She can talk.”

“Like, take her to him?” The Imperator is dumbfounded. 

The messenger shrugs helplessly. “That’s what he  _ said _ .”

After a moment of hesitation, the Imperator gestures to the corridor with the shotgun. “Fine then. In we go.”

She’s only been here once. The corridor is long and dimly lit, the majority of the electric bulbs gone dark. Even Before, this was an old facility, and in the thousands of days since she’s been here, it’s only gotten worse. The rot has been replaced by the reek of urine and the familiar musk of heavy fuel oil. 

“Who is the Blood?” she asks. 

The Imperator snorts. “Like you don’t know.”

“He’s the blood reborn,” the second Farmer murmurs. “He’s immortan himself.”

“She’s the one who killed him,” the first one reminds his comrade, eyeing Furiosa fearfully. “Don’t answer, she’s just gettin’ in your head.”

They wind down the hall, until the walls suddenly open up into a wide, endlessly black space. There’s only a small source of light, a brazier roasting meat of questionable origin. A chair sits next to the brazier, and for a moment, she doesn’t see the shape it holds, the occupant hidden in the flickering shadows. 

“Imperator Furiosa,” says Corpus Colossus, pushing himself forward into the light. “Welcome to the Bullet Farm.”


	143. Chapter 143

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so - this chapter is a _monster_ , but I wasn't happy with any of the breaks. here it is in all its massive, bloated glory. 
> 
> this is it, my loves. this is the beginning of the denouement, posted just a week before this crazy frankenfic's second anniversary. this massive undertaking is my love letter to this fandom (I love everyone in this bar!) and I would never have gotten this far without you.

When she’d been a breeder, it was during a period of time where Joe liked to show off his Wives, before the half-made creatures they kept bearing wore him down and the women were kept imprisoned in the fresh air of the Vault.

Later, as the guardian of the Vault herself, she’d heard Miss Giddy explain the practices of kings and queens, and she’d understood: Joe had been holding court. There had been banquets and parties, lavish celebrations of the ruler’s might and wealth, and as part of his largesse, Joe’s Wives had been shrouded in gauzy white cloth and paraded around.

One of the meals had been some kind of roasted bird, the bodies presented in such a way that each ribcage was cracked open, a delicate vegetable blossom nestled within. She remembers the contrast of pale, seasoned meat and sunshine-bold flower. It was supposed to be beautiful, she was sure of it, but it had instead looked strangely desperate, incongruous, _wrong_ , too much effort put into the wrong kind of work. The gaping ribs reminded her of violation, of legs forced open, the flower a cruel promise that would never be kept.

She feels like that right now, an empty cavity abruptly exposed.

On a more mechanical level, her brain is sputtering like an engine gasping on an empty tank. Joe’s eldest son is here, alive, inexplicably so-

He’d fallen from the window-

She thought he’d _jumped_ -

But the _Blood_.

Of course he’s the Blood. Of _course_ . It all crashes into place like gear teeth. Corpus knows the Citadel better than anyone, knows people and how to manipulate them. She was a fool to think he would have taken himself out of the picture as simply as a suicide. It was too easy, too neat - she should have known. She should have _thought_. She should have sent out scouts, tried to find the body - but she hadn’t had any scouts then, just the Pups-

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” Corpus says. He gestures to a box nearby. “Have a can of water. Give me one, too. No - open it. Don’t be stupid.”

Her human hand is nerveless, but she makes herself move, grasping the dusty can and awkwardly puncturing the top with her prosthetic hook. The boxes are crumbling cardboard, the cans a cloudlike pristine gray.

He takes the can and raises it to his lips, drinking deeply. “Well,” he says, considering the can. “It’s no mothers’ milk.” Then: “You should sit.”

The way he speaks triggers a knee-jerk obedience in a place so deep she’d forgotten it existed. Part of her screams that she will _stand_ , she will not do what he says, but before her mind regains control, her body is sinking down onto a nearby crate, her own unopened water clutched in her human hand.

“So.” He considers her. “You came in the Gastown tanker, which means you either tricked the Actuary or have his aid. Which was it?”

She is metal. She is a vehicle, emotionless and unassailable. “He knows I’m here.”

Corpus nods, as if this information is entirely expected. “He’s pitting you against me. Hoping one of us will eliminate the other.” He cocks his head. “Are you here to kill me, Furiosa?”

She suddenly doesn’t know why she’s here. She came to see about the Blood, and now that she knows, she’s paralyzed, still processing the apparent fact of Corpus’s unlikely survival.

 _No unnecessary killing_.

Corpus could be a very, very powerful ally, but she doesn’t believe he’ll be content with letting the Council rule. Capable would argue that he should be given a chance, but...Furiosa is not Capable.

She doesn’t know if she could ever _be_ Capable.

She hadn’t answered his question. She doesn’t need to. He’s watching her, his eyes not missing anything in the flickering light from the brazier. He turns and nods to the Bullet Farmers still lingering at the door. “Stay close, but stand down.”

She could kill him. She could kill him right now. He’s fragile - she’s broken harder necks than his, and his birdlike bones will go to powder in her hands-

“You’re surprised to see me,” Corpus says.

She makes herself meet his gaze .“Why did you tell them to stand down?”

He grins. “I know you, Furiosa. I’ve known you for years. You wait. You assess. You don’t know if I’m a threat or an ally. You won’t attack until you’re sure.”

She narrows her eyes. “How do you know I’m not sure?”

He raises an eyebrow. “I’m still alive.” He takes another sip of his water. “It’s why Dad trusted you. You’re not stupid. You don’t take unnecessary risks.” He tucks the can into the curve of his little leg, and leans forward. “Look. I have every right to kill you. You could try and be preemptive and kill me first, and you would most likely succeed, but you wouldn’t make it out of here alive.” He frowns. “You’ve put me in a difficult position. You made a single stupid decision, and we both have to deal with the consequences. We both know that despite your leafy paradise, you need what I have. You are defenseless. You could cobble together enough trade for a few arms, maybe even enough to make yourself into a credible threat, but that won’t last forever. No one is going to trade for something they can take, and you and your little revolution will die.”

She doesn’t respond.

“Did you think you could make it better? Do you even know what ‘better’ means?” He shakes his head. “Dad _made_ things better. He gave you water. He gave you protection. The fuck do you want? A crown? That’s not a rhetorical question, bitch. You owe me an answer.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“I own you,” Corpus snaps. “My dad’s brand is on your neck. That means you owe me everything.”

“You can’t own a human being.” The words come out of her mouth before she can stop them, as if Angharad is controlling her lips and tongue from beyond the grave. “We are not things.”

“We _are_ things,” Corpus retorts. “Just because we can think doesn’t mean we’re more than we are. We’re soft. We’re weak. We are animals controlled by our emotions and our physical needs. You think you’re free? There’s no such thing. Walk out into the waste - I guarantee within a day you’ll be desperate for water. Your body will not let you be free, and whoever provides will own you utterly.”

He’s wrong. She _knows_ he’s wrong, but she doesn’t have the words to articulate it. If Angharad were here, she’d know exactly how to counter, how to shred him with syllables until he’s nothing but a quivering, defeated mess.

Furiosa is not Angharad. She is a vehicle, a mode of transportation. Her body is a conveyance for anger and revenge. She was not made to sit and idly debate philosophy. She is-

She is a person. A human. She is someone who is learning to be the recipient of kindness and affection, to drive her own rig to a destination of her own choosing.

“My father _made_ you,” Corpus says. “He made all of us. Why was the Citadel stable for so long? Have you asked yourself that?”

Furiosa doesn’t answer.

“It’s because Dad was _loved_. People feared him, and rightly so, but more than that, they were convinced he could take care of them. People don’t want to fend for themselves; they want water and food and shelter, and they want a purpose in life. Whoever gives that to them owns them. He took you from the waste and he made you a leader. He didn’t have to.”

“He made _nothing_ ,” Furiosa retorts, righteous fury blooming in her veins. “I am the daughter of Mary Jo Bassa, the initiate of Katie Concannon. I am one of the Many Mothers, and they are the ones who made me.” She is a poor example of their work, of the way her mothers took the desert and shaped a community out of sand and bare will, but her pedigree is there, the fact of her birth worked into her bones. What she’s become sits in her marrow like lead, soft and malevolent, a violence that can’t be scrubbed out.

“That’s a pretty speech.” Corpus toys with the line to his filter mask. “Pity. We could have ruled together, you know, me as the brains and you as the muscle.”

Ace had said something similar once upon a time, a passing comment about how he just couldn’t understand how Furiosa could have been unworthy, that if anyone could bear the Immortan’s seed to fruition, it had to be his Imperator, the driver of the War Rig, the infamous Bag of Nails.

It happens like the sudden snap of a sparkplug, the fury blooming outward in her body. For seven thousand days her identity has been bound to Joe, has been reduced to her utility to Joe, and now, two hundred days after she’d ripped the lies from his mouth, he is still here, and everything she is, everything she still could be is _still_ subsumed by his ghost.

“You were different from the others,” Corpus says. “You should have born him an heir. Maybe Dad’s seed was twisted, but you could have made it strong. I wanted it to be you.”

_“Wordburger,” Miss Giddy had said once to the girls: “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”_

How often had Furiosa lain in bed in the Vault with sticky thighs clamped together, praying? She’d tried to visualize the moment of conception, the moment the seed and egg combined, the moment when tissue became something more than viscous fluid. Every moment of brief indigestion could be impending morning sickness, every vague abdominal twinge either implantation or miscarriage. She hadn’t thought of being a mother - she’d just wanted to be pregnant, to be saved.

“I argued for you,” Corpus goes on. “I told Dad to keep you. He told the Mechanic to try everything. Do you know how much trade Dad spent on medical supplies for you?”

The first Organic Mechanic had had boxes and pouches and ampoules of medicine for every conceivable ailment, and during her time in the Vault, it had seemed like there was nothing he couldn’t treat; later, she would understand that his supplies were severely limited, and restricted only to Joe and his Wives. As an Imperator, she’d bargained for some of those same supplies from traders all over the Wasteland.

She knows _exactly_ how much those medicines cost. She can’t imagine the price of the rarer chemicals, the ones the old Mechanic had promised would make her belly swell.

 _Do whatever it takes_.

“I used to think you did it out of spite,” Corpus tells her. “It should have worked.”

It hadn’t worked. She’d swelled, but alarmingly fast, and the nausea was devastating. It had _hurt_ , worse than anything she’d ever felt up until that point, like glowing coals had sprang to life in her belly to dance with every breath. She’d become a prisoner to her own body, her heart racing in her throat and the world spinning around her.

She thinks of the girls, of Angharad’s complete dismissal of her own pregnancy, and she is suddenly furious. “The world is poisoned,” she says coldly.

He regards her for a long moment, a grown man in a twisted, childlike body, his deformed limbs curled around the great barrel shape of his chest. “We are all prisoners to our disability,” he says finally, his eyes dropping to her mechanical hand. “Someone like my unlamented brother Scrotus would say that physical strength is the key to survival, but you and I know better, don’t we? There are many ways to survive.”

 _Do whatever it takes_.

“Furiosa,” Corpus says, and she realizes she’s not looking at him, just staring into the middle distance at the wall. “You and I were honest with each other, once.” His face is broad and sincere, and she realizes he actually believes it. “Can we not be that way again?”

Confined to his chair, Corpus has always been a watcher. He sees things others don’t, notices small details and tucks them away to use when their utility suited him. He is Joe’s oldest son, the treasured first, the damaged first. It has never been stated, but Furiosa is sure Corpus is the reason the Vault was established, the reason for Joe’s obsession with perfect breeding. Corpus’s mother was Joe’s wife - a real one, the kind of wife from Miss Giddy’s stories of Before, not just a title bestowed on favored breeders.

Corpus might understand what it takes to succeed in the Wasteland, but he has always been Joe’s firstborn. He might see himself as a wily survivor, but he is the heir to Joe’s legacy. He was born as the world was ending, and he has always had his father’s might to protect him. It protects him now - even dead, the threat of the Blood is enough to let a man with bones more fragile than sun-rotted plastic take over the Bullet Farm in an unchallenged coup.

He’d sat among them in the Vault when she was barely more than a girl, talking cheerfully, a presence that was embraced because he was not his father, a welcome respite from the agonizing boredom. He had a way of making them all talk, of asking about their cycles in such a way that made it seem less intrusive than the Mechanic, even though Corpus still took the same notes.

She hasn’t thought about him. She hasn’t figured him out yet. She’d thought he was _dead_ , and she’d been half-dead herself and it was just another blow, the loss of a potential enemy and the knowledge he carried. She’d been down to her rims, throwing sparks as she tried to navigate her role in the newly-liberated Citadel, and she’d thought he’d killed himself rather than face whatever tribunal he’d thought might be coming.

Corpus has styled himself the Blood, the heir to the Immortan, but it won’t last. She doesn’t know how she knows, until realization hits her like a shockwave, a sonic burst that she feels from the roots of her teeth to the depths of her bones.

Another of Miss Giddy’s wordburgers come to mind, one that had made Angharad’s eyes light up in a way that nothing else could: _the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation_.

Joe stayed in power by taking, by categorizing people by their utility. Those with no more use were discarded. Furiosa has spent what feels like her entire life trying to be useful enough to survive, and even if he doesn’t realize it, Corpus has done the same.

“He used you too,” she makes herself say. “Note-taker. Watcher. He took what he could from you and used it to build himself.”

Corpus bares his teeth. “I gave him what I could.”

“You were a child,” Furiosa says, and it feels like being on the top of a hill, staring down the slope and knowing that if she keeps talking, she won’t be able to stop the momentum. “He told you how to be.”

“He needed us as much as we needed him,” Corpus retorts. “We all would have died-”

“How many times did he tell you that?” she snaps. “How many times did he say you’d die without him? He protects us, he cares for us?” There’s a discordant note of hysterical sarcasm bleeding into her words, the whine of an engine that’s gone wrong and can’t be corrected. Angharad would slice him to ribbons right now, her words guided with surgical precision. Furiosa is a blunt weapon, and she will bludgeon Corpus. “Everything he ever did, everything he ever said - it was to secure himself first.”

“Of course he did!” Corpus rolls his eyes. “Dad had to protect himself to protect us. If he was weak, do you think the Citadel would have survived? You think Splendid was the first Wife to ever think she had it figured out? To think some passive collective would work better than what Dad created? He gave us purpose. He gave us a common enemy-”

“He pitted us against each other. He made sure we were too busy fighting each other-”

“He made you _prove_ yourself,” Corpus insists.

Somehow, there is a difference between Katie goading her young initiate into hitting back, and Joe watching as the Wretched tore at each other for a mouthful of dirty water. Furiosa doesn’t know how to articulate the difference, but she _knows_ it’s there. Sand can either scrub away dirt or remove skin entirely, and she knows Joe was wrong.

“You got to drive the War Rig,” Corpus says. “You, who gave him no children, no _gratitude_ . He saved you from the Wasteland, brought you into his inner sanctum. He _forgave_ you, he chose to _trust_ you.”

“He _stole_ me.” She’s tumbling down the hill, the fire rising in her throat. “He _stole_ me and killed my mother and _used_ me-”

“She was past childbearing,” he interrupts, “and you were so young, it was your duty to the human race-”

“It wasn’t my _choice_ .” And that’s the crux of it: Joe controlled everything, the water, the food, the shelter. Even the Wives who went gladly into the Vault, the Wretched who willingly climbed onto the lift to give their milk and their sweat and their blood - none of it was a choice. Not really. It couldn’t be, not when the alternative was dying slowly in the poisoned waste. And more than that, Joe was from Before. He’d lived Before, he’d fought in the wars. He was one of the men who killed the world, and Furiosa _cannot_ be grateful for the few scraps thrown her way. Not when those scraps are the bones of her own mothers.

“What are you going to do now?” Corpus asks quietly. He shifts in his chair. “If you kill me, you’ll bring the entire Wasteland down on the Citadel. You think your council of milkers and breeders can hold? Dad’s name kept you all safe.”

“ _I_ kept them safe,” Furiosa retorts. “I killed his enemies for him-”

Suddenly, she knows what she’s going to do. The decision she didn’t want to make has already been made. It was made thousands of days ago, when Vernal shot Mary Jo Bassa in the face, and even before then, the seeds of it were planted in the Green Place. The knowledge crystallizes in her veins like ice, and for the first time since she turned her wheel, Furiosa knows exactly what she’s going to do. She knows who she is.

They’d called her the Boltcutter. There is one last chain to be cut.

Corpus sees the change on her face. “Kill me, and you’ll never make it out,” he says. He raises one spindly arm, and points to the wires taped to his chest. “My heartbeat is tied to a radio broadcast. If my heart stops, this entire complex explodes.”

Killswitch. Of course.

“I know,” says Furiosa.  

They stare at each other. “This is a mistake,” Corpus says quietly. “You are going to regret this.”

She doesn’t answer.

He tries again. “Capable will be angry. She’s Angharad’s sycophant, isn’t she? The queen bee is dead, so someone else is trying to fill her shoes?”

It’s such a reach, such a strange distillation of a complex relationship that the laugh catches her off guard, the sound bubbling up from her chest along with a bizarre warmth that feels almost... maternal. He doesn’t understand. He can’t. He _can’t_ . He doesn’t have the capacity; he wasn’t raised that way, and she’s lost the capacity even though she _was_ , and neither of them will ever truly understand what Capable and the others are building.

Corpus scowls. “What’s funny?”

“That future isn’t for us,” Furiosa says, and something inside of her comes unclenched. Max had said hope was a mistake, and he wasn’t wrong. The hope isn’t for her. It isn’t for him. It’s for those who are coming, the ones who inherit. It’s for Dag’s daughter, Heirloom, and all the children who follow her.

“Oh, spare me.” He rolls his eyes. “Look, there’s a gun in the box behind you. If you’re going to puke some womanly platitudes, just shoot me now. I know you want to.”

She shouldn’t reach for it. It could be a venomous lizard, a grenade, anything. But then it’s in her hand, a small pistol. She doesn’t want to think about why it’s there, about its convenient placement. He’s toying with her, but it’s actually _loaded_ -

“Kill me already,” he says. “What are you waiting for?”

The gun’s in her hand, a familiar weight against human flesh.

_No unnecessary killing._

_All killing is necessary._

_Killing is never necessary._

Her heart is in her throat, her head suddenly miles above her body. She is indistinct, skinless, a quivering, exposed nebula of veins.

“No,” says Furiosa. She is racing over uncharted road, her wheels barely touching the sand. “I won’t.”

She won’t.

It isn’t what she’d decided, it isn’t what she’s _not_ decided, but suddenly, it’s done. He might not have a gun, but he’s far from powerless, and he is Joe’s son, but - she can’t.

She, who has killed without mercy, who strikes first and hardest, who has not hesitated _you cannot hesitate, you have to keep moving, out here everything hurts-_

She may be having a stroke. Her entire body has gone numb and vague.

Corpus is silent, considering her judgement. “They turned you,” he finally says, his voice breathless with disbelief. “They actually turned you.” He sounds almost impressed. “The Bag of Nails, as soft as the breeder she once was.”

It doesn’t feel soft. It’s a harsh electrical burr, a sharp crackle, the startled, painful grind of a transmission’s missed gear. The women aren’t soft, and if they are, softness isn’t _weakness_. She is a blaze of protective rage, of redirected hurt, but it skitters through her bones like bottled lightning. She is an overwound spring, twisted and unable to expand.

“If a road goes soft, it’ll swallow a rig,” she chokes out. She’s seen it.

“It’s still a hole,” he says, and smirks. “Holes are made to be filled.”

Capable’s face, burning with righteous anger. Toast, practical and forthright. Dag, with her bowl of green paint. Cheedo and her healing hands.

Angharad, a distant goddess, as remote and untouchable as the moon. Katie, who went against her own directive to try and reclaim her initiate. Mary Jo Bassa, who hissed, “do whatever it takes,” and _meant_ it. Valkyrie, strong and tall and somehow still unbroken.

Max, stabbing her to make her breathe, opening her up and climbing inside. Blood fades, bodies die, but he’s inside her still, working her lungs like a bellows, a ceaseless nuclear heat.

She is suddenly drenched in sweat, air rushing into the hollow cavity of her ribs. She’s shaky, naked, like a thing newly born. “No,” she says again, and then more emphatically: “We are not things.”

His face is impassive. “Give me the gun, then.”

Her fingers are still locked around the handle, a rictus of self-preservation. “They want to talk. They’ll want to make an agreement.”

He almost laughs. “They are my property. Every single one of them is going to die. Every single member of that so-called Council is diseased, and they will all be amputated like the rotted limbs they are. Give me the gun.”

“They’re stronger than you give them credit for.”

“They convinced you to kill Dad. They should be put down.”

“I did it myself,” she says.

“Splendid knew how to manipulate people just as much as Dad did,” Corpus says. “You should have heard the shit she tried to tell Rictus, and the dumb cunt, he _believed_ it. That’s why Dad brought you in.” He glares. “That baby would have been _unstoppable_ , the heir Dad worked so hard to have, but you fucking killed it too.”

He didn’t do any of the work, she almost retorts, but then second half of Corpus’s sentence crashes into the first, a cacophonous wreck of splintering metal and screaming hypocrisy.

_She went under the wheels._

_But did you_ see _it?_

_She went under the wheels!_

Furiosa didn’t kill Angharad. Didn’t she? Is that what they all think? “She fell,” she manages, and it feels like bitter bile in the hard clench of her throat.

“You took her out of the Vault,” Corpus snaps. “If she’d stayed, that baby would still be alive-”

“You don’t know that!”

“Organic said it was healthy. He said it would have lived!”

“You can’t _know_ that,” Furiosa spits. “No one can.” They were all healthy, they were all perfect, right up until they were born with too many limbs and not enough skull, and they were all male until the telltale folds of their skin betrayed them. The ones that breathed went into the pool, mouths open in a soundless scream as they sank-

“Some of the War Boys came back, Furiosa. You may have thought you killed everyone, but you’re not that good.” He cocks his head. “Splendid lived through the night. Did you know that? She lingered. They cut the baby out and it was dead, and then Dad took Splendid and Giddy and gave them a proper Wasteland traitor’s funeral.”

“ _No_ -” She can’t breathe. She can’t-

He lets her reel in shock, just watching as the world spins around her;  he’s wearing an expression of grotesque glee, making no effort to hide his enjoyment. “Furiosa, do you know what a rat is?”

A _rat_? She desperately casts about her memory, frowning. “It’s an animal…?”

He hums confirmation. “Don’t see many now, on account of them being eaten. Used to be a big problem in the old days, though. Get one into a building, and it’ll cause a lot of damage. A _lot_ of damage.”

She doesn’t understand, she’s on the cusp of understanding-

“Sometimes a rat will chew through some wires,” Corpus goes on. “And sometimes a rat will get into the mining explosives and take down an entire smelter.”

She’s suddenly cold.

He knows about Max.

He’d said he wasn’t followed. He’d said he wasn’t _followed_ -

“Dad kept everything analog because he knew how technology could be used against him.” Corpus idly scratches his belly. “That was thirty years ago. Most people don’t even know that kind of technology even _exists_ now. ”

There’s a roaring in her ears like a sandstorm.

“We put a tracker in that piece of shit car,” Corpus tells her, “and he went straight home.”

Her face feels like sun-rotted plastic. She has to deny it. She has to- but _how_ \- “I don’t-”

His lips curl in a sneer. “Don’t be stupid. I know who he is. He’s the same wasteland scav who won Gastown’s precious V8 and disappeared. He’s the same one you’ve been fucking for six months, the same one you took out half of Gastown to save so heroically when he got gutshot-”

“It wasn’t-” _his gut_ , and it’s too late. The words are out before she can think, but Corpus already _knows_ , and he was just waiting for the confirmation. She shuts her mouth with an audible click of teeth, but it’s too late, and he pounces on the split-second crack in Furiosa’s composure.

“You think I wouldn’t know? You think I don’t know my own people, my own _home_? You kick me out, you steal my property, you kill my family-” He’s caught in coughing fit, his drumskin chest heaving as he struggles to regain his breath.

Now is her chance. She should go on the offensive, hit him in the windpipe and crush his fragile skull, he knows about Max, he knows about _Max_ , and she’s utterly paralyzed, her heartbeat so hard and fast it’s a single rushing tone, there’s a hose clamp on her windpipe and she’s going to vomit and she _can’t-_

“Do you know what’s beautiful about lead?” Corpus asks quietly. She shakes her head, her human hand clenched tight in a fist and utterly nerveless. “It takes desperate men and makes them mean. It takes a fighter and makes him a killer. It took my brother Scabrous and stripped away any humanity he might have had. Do you know why I went to the Bullet Farm, instead of Gastown?”

She can smell the metal in the air, sickly-sweet and rotted. Her heart isn’t even beating anymore. She is ice. She is frozen, she is a solid block of panic and blood and puke-

 

“I chose to come here because the Farmers can’t be bought. They lust for blood, and whoever promises it to them _owns_ them. Kill me, and they’ll fucking destroy you. You’ll never win. Peace will never win.” His lips twitch in a cold smile. “You came to see who was running this place. Now you’re going to die, and everyone who helped you is going to die too.”

Max is waiting out in the dunes, Max and Toast and the Vuvalini and the Riders, all of them, it’s a trap, it’s a _trap_ -

She can’t warn them-

She’s never getting out of here alive. It’s not a decision. It was never a decision.

 _I got unlucky_.

“Wait,” she says. “Just - wait.”

Corpus _giggles_ . “Are you going to bargain with me? With _me?_ Oh, please do. I’d love to see it.”

She has nothing. She has _nothing_. “The flares - if they don’t see one-”

“Don’t play with me. You’re not good enough,” Corpus snorts. “They’ll run right back to the Citadel.”

“ _He_ won’t,” she says quietly.

He shakes his head, shifting in his chair. “Doesn’t matter. They come here, they’ll be dead. They go home, they’ll die slowly. Your part is done. You’re already dead. _Think_ of it, Furiosa,” he wheezes. “Dad might have died quickly; that was lucky for him. Your people, though - you will hear their screams in _hell-_ ”

The force of the gunshot is so loud that at first, she doesn’t even realize what it is. It’s not until she notices the slow trickle of smoke from the barrel that it registers she pulled the trigger.  

Her ears are ringing. Corpus’s mouth is open like a dying crow.

He’s _laughing_. He’s laughing and choking and slapping an open palm on his shrivelled thigh.

“You stupid bitch,” he hollers. “Did you really think I’d give you a loaded gun?”

The balance hadn’t felt off, she’d seen the bullets-

Blanks. The pistol is loaded with blanks.

Her bones are still echoing with shock. She hadn’t _wanted_ to, but she’d shot him anyway. Her own body betraying her-

He raises a hand. “Kill her.”

She has just enough time to draw a single breath, and then the Bullet Farmers are on her.


	144. Chapter 144

The first shot is very nearly her end; the bullet is a sharp, hot burn on her cheek before she even hears the report. “Idiots!” Corpus bellows. “You'll shoot  _ me _ !”

The Bullet Farm Imperator is right behind his bullet, charging through the room’s cavernous dark. Before she can dodge, they collide with rib-cracking impact and go tumbling onto the floor. A cloud of bright stars exploding in her eyes, Furiosa swings up with the pistol and manages to turn her head just as she pulls the trigger. The blank takes off the front of the Imperator’s skull and he slumps bonelessly against her with a hot wash of arterial blood.

Choking and trying to remind stunned lungs how to breathe, she rolls, kicking out at the brazier as another Bullet Farmer evanesces through the smoke. The brazier tips in a spray of ash and sparks, and she distantly notes Corpus yelp in pain. The second Farmer trips over the rolling brazier, staggering forward, and she lunges. He crumples with a howl as a blank shatters his tibia, and then she’s pressing the pistol to his neck for a messy decapitation.

Six. Did she have six shots? She’s used four. She’s got two left, and two Farmers.

Arms close around her shoulders with bruising force, and she rears back, slamming the back of her head into her attacker’s face. The movement feels like a snapping chain, harsh and raw and  _ wrong _ , and for one endless second she’s sure she’s dead, she’s done permanent damage, the pain is  _ overwhelming _ and everything goes clenched and black. Clawing her way back to consciousness, she lashes out, utterly blind, and when the gun connects with something soft, she pulls the trigger. She’s rewarded with a spray of pulverized flesh. 

One bullet. One man left? Breathing hard through her nose, she chokes back snot and vertigo and forces blurring eyes to focus. 

“You and me, bitch,” the last Farmer gleefully announces, and springs. 

She’s going to block, but her bad ankle abruptly gives out, sending her careening into a stack of boxes. Towers of emergency water rations collapse around her, a pummeling cascade of perfect cans. There’s a steel desk, and she rolls over the top, hurling water cans at the Farmer as he scrabbles after her. One can bursts, dousing the glowing embers of the brazier and plunging the entire room into complete darkness.

It’s a moment she needs to regroup, crouched behind the desk and trying not to vomit. She has one bullet left. The Farmer is crashing around behind her. Her other weapons are confiscated, and she’s too far from the other Farmer bodies to steal their guns-

Light bursts forth, phosphor-gray and painfully bright. “Get her,” Corpus squalls, “she’s  _ right there _ -” and then the last Farmer is after her and she’s scrambling again. She’s half-blind, everything haloed and blurring in her bad eye, the flare stabbing hard through to the back of her skull. Another stack of rations goes tumbling, and Corpus yells again, but there’s no time, the Farmer is swinging a huge knife and she has to  _ move _ \- 

She blocks with her mechanical arm, the knife skidding down the metal with a noise she feels clear to her marrow. She has the pistol at his neck, against his jugular, but when she pulls the trigger, the Farmer twists, and the can underneath his head explodes in a spray of aluminum and water. 

Fuck.  _ Fuck. _ Bitter frustration floods like bile, and then she is an engine on fire, her metal arm a piston, and she pounds and pounds and pounds until first his face shatters, and then her arm. 

Abruptly, her body stops responding, her muscles gone hot and liquid like melted steel. Her arm is broken, the fixed metal post snapped and hanging limply from twisted support wires, thoroughly coated in a sticky pulp of bone shards and ichor. The flare is guttering, dying, everything cast in sharp, jagged shadows. 

For several long moments, the only sound is the hiss of the flare and the clotted bubble of her own breath in her throat. There’s blood flooding her mouth, sour and ferrous. Shakily, she pushes herself to her feet, wobbling a little. She turns to find Corpus, but he’s gone, he’s gone _ again _ -

No. He’s still here in the flickering dark. His chair is overturned, and Joe’s eldest son is lying on the ground, eyes wide with panic and a thin foam trickling from the corner of his mouth. The muscles of his throat leap with the desperate impulse to breathe, but the bellows of his chest is still. 

She knows what a broken neck looks like, even in a man whose bones are brittle as rotted plastic. 

He’s on his way out, and the merciful thing would be to take the Farmer’s discarded knife and bleed him, but Furiosa is a shell, a fragile egg without a yolk, the poison guzzoline of battle still boiling in her veins. 

“Angharad didn’t turn me,” she rasps, nudging him with a boot and spitting a thick wad of blood on the ground. “She just reminded me of who I already was. Do you want to know why I’m really here?” 

He gurgles. 

“I’m here because I know you’re selling arms to the Buzzards, and you’re going to tell me where you’re getting the munitions.”

His mouth opens and closes soundlessly, and after a moment’s hesitation, she drops down and grabs his face with her human hand, pressing her mouth to his - his lips are Joe’s lips, she’s going to puke - and giving him just enough breath to speak. “There’s - a place,” he croaks, and with another breath- “Old bunker. Bought - code...from...people who - run satellites.”

“ _ Where? _ ” He’s fading.  _ Fuck _ , he’s fading, and she needs to know. “Where is it? Who are these people?”

“East!” His eyes are almost complete white, the pupils rolled back in his skull. “Met in...Bartertown. But east!” He wheezes hard. “But you’ll - never make it.”

“Tell me how I get there.”

“Fuck you,” gurgles Corpus, and then he dies. 

She almost gives him another breath, but he’s gone, he’s  _ dead _ , and she can feel the echo of his mouth on hers, and she’s suddenly choking, her entire body clenching in one blazing knot of incandescent pain and brutal fury, and she barely has enough time to turn away. Vomit splatters on the ground, thin and red, and she’s so- she  _ can’t _ -

_ Out of the womb, everything hurts. _

She doesn’t realize she’s lying down until there’s a rock abruptly digging into her shoulder. She eases herself up, breath hitching as her ribs shift. Her head is pounding, and there’s a whining drone in her ears that makes her molars ache. 

It’s only after too long that she realizes it’s not her ears, it’s a warning klaxon. It’s electric, discordant, and  _ Corpus has a killswitch- _

A killswitch that is attached to a heart that’s no longer beating. 

_ Oh _ , she thinks, and then oddly:  _ well...okay _ . 

For a moment, she considers not moving, just lying back down and accepting her fate, but Max is out there, Max is waiting- 

The whine is getting louder, becoming an unbearable pressure in her skull. With a groan, she crawls through the debris, pushing aside half-empty boxes and rolling cans until she’s under the metal desk, curling hard into a ball, her metal arm braced against her fragile human neck. The explosions start later than she expects, a series of dull thumps somewhere above her. The world is hollow, an egg, a womb, and then she herself is the fetus, being forcefully crushed into the birth canal.

_ This is okay _ , she thinks. The girls will figure it out. Max will keep them safe. The last chain tying them to Joe has been severed. 

This is okay.

This is okay. 

This is-


	145. Chapter 145

He isn’t good at staying, but here he is, tucked behind a dune and waiting with his heart in his throat for a flare he’s terrified will never come.

The weather is warming, the heat of the sun seeping into his bones. He watches the sky, the amiable expanse of blue, until he’s not in his car, he’s back in the Gigahorse, bleeding into her to make her live.

“Max,” he’d said. “My name is Max.”

 It wasn’t, until he’d said it was. He was no one, nothing, not even a ghost until Furiosa christened him Fool, and then, as his blood seeped into her veins, he became someone else. He’s not Jessie’s Max anymore. He’s not the Max who wore a badge, the son of the man with shiny shoes. “We are not things,” Angharad had said, and it all broke loose in his skull, the pieces of his truth swirling around like dust storms in his brain, scouring away the grime of surviving. “Max. I’m Max.”

 The Wives had grinned, hands outstretched to brush his shoulders, his back, and he didn’t quite flinch. “Nice to meet you, Max,” said Capable.

 “Max,” he’d repeated, and she’d laughed wetly, Cheedo leaning over to bury her face in her hair.

 No one saw him except Furiosa, and at that moment, he’d felt seen by everyone _except_ Furiosa.

She still sees him. He doesn’t know who he is, what he does in this world. He’d forgotten his own name until it had suddenly sprung out of his own mouth, startling him most of all. He hadn’t come together completely at that moment, and he’s still unfinished, a figure made in cool mud.

 He’s starting to accept that whatever he is, whatever he’s being made into, he wants her fingerprints on his skin. He’s a different man that he was for Jessie. He is thinner, leaner, weaker, but...for the first time in thousands of days, he feels like he has something like a purpose.

 There’s a strange freedom in commitment. He’d forgotten, but there it is, a decision he didn’t realize he’d made. The roots of it are thick and steady and warm, and for one brief moment, he isn’t afraid. He isn’t _afraid_ -

 He feels the explosion before he hears it, and his bowels are suddenly full of ice. His foot is mashing the pedal before his brain commands it, and when the shockwave hits, deep and hard, the car is already cresting the top of the dune.

Later, the Riders will slap his shoulders and crow with glee over details of a battle he doesn’t remember. They’ll give him drinks his shaking hands can’t hold, they’ll ask him questions he can’t hear over the featureless roar of panic that still echoes in his head. He doesn’t remember seeing Glory, doesn’t remember her sudden yelp in his ear as he guns the engine and heads straight for the gates. He doesn’t remember someone putting up a flare and the Citadel responding with as much force as they could muster. He doesn’t remember the Bullet Farm miners rising up against their masters, the walls of tainted spoil turning red with blood.

The bare facts are these: the Bullet Farm falls. Furiosa does not.

Nothing else matters.

 

****

 

When she comes to, her head is ringing. Max is staring down at her, his face streaked with ash and sweat, his eyes blown wide with panic over a dirty gas mask.

“It’s over,” she tries to say, but the words turn to acrid smoke and catch in her lungs.

“I’ve got you,” Max says. It sounds like a litany, his voice cracking with desperation and made hollow by the protective rubber. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Her human hand fists in his jacket, and he’s pulling the mask off his own face, tenderly fitting it over her mouth and nose. “Here - here. Take this. Breathe this. There you go. There you go.”

Beyond her field of vision, she hears Toast holler, “Max, you get her? Is she alive?”

“Got her,” he calls back, his eyes raking across Furiosa’s face. She can feel him shaking. “Are you-?”

It’s too hard to breathe, impossible to talk, so she curls the fingers of her human hand inward and weakly taps at his shoulder with her upraised thumb. He immediately presses his mouth to her knuckles with a shudder.

Her ears are ringing and there is too much blood in her mouth, but she feels...calm.

She starts to close her eyes, but Max’s hands are suddenly gripping her face. “Don’t! No, no no. Stay with me. Please. _Please_. Please stay with me.”

“Fool.” The word comes out clearly, and when she smiles, it feels like her skin is cracking, like dried mud crumbling away to reveal tender, new flesh. “Not going anywhere without you.”

He huffs, sagging in relief.

 

****

 

She drifts in and out. “Come on, pet, need you on your feet if you can,” Mari is saying, “you’re too big a girl for me to carry anymore. No - keep the mask on, I know it’s hard to breathe, but there’s a lot of smoke-”

She’s upright, but she’s _so tired_ , the light is too bright, and everything is an indistinct blur-

“Someone should stay,” Amy says. “These people aren’t soldiers. Can't tell what Gastown will try.”

“I’ll do it,” Toast says, and then, “I can do this.”

“No!” It’s Ello, loudly, and upset enough that his voice cracks. “You don’t get to stay here-”

“It’s not a discussion!”

“These people,” he continues, “you don’t _know_ them-”

“I _will_ ,” she retorts.

There’s a long pause, and Furiosa sways. Max has one hand on her belt, the other cupping her bare stump. He is steady, solid- “Reliable,” she murmurs thickly, and feels the warmth of his breath on her neck.

“...fine,” Ello declares. “Fine. If you’re gonna stay, then- then I’m gonna stay too.”

Toast audibly rolls her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot-”

“ _No_ ,” he insists. “Either you come back, or I stay. If you’re gonna be the Imperator, you gotta have an ace, and you can’t trust _none_ of these fucks.” Once, he'd been barely more than a Pup, angry, insolent, but here he is, standing his ground and offering himself without hesitation; and then there's Toast, tiny, ferocious Toast, glaring back but still considering, weighing her options. 

Furiosa is suddenly  _so damn proud_. 

“ _Fine_.” Toast sucks her teeth. “Stay. You can go make sure those mortars are secure. But I'm not an Imperator!”

He grins. "Whatever you say, boss." 

"Right then." Mari says. "Amy, you're staying too?"

The old Vuvalini grumbles. "Can't let the kids have all the fun."

Warmth is spreading in Furiosa's belly, a soft, pleasant counterpoint to the ache in her chest. “Reliable,” she repeats muzzily. She leans against Max, who grunts as he shifts his weight.

"Stay with me," he mutters, and she does. Of course she does. 


	146. Chapter 146

There were three live sons born of the Immortan, and none were perfect. War Boys talk, and Ace has been around long enough to know, served enough Imperators to hear the truth. Corpus was frighteningly intelligent, but fragile. Scrotus, strong and smart, but an uncontrollable sadist. Rictus, a sweet and thoughtful child in a hulking figure of human might. Joe was Immortan, that much Ace had never questioned, but even a god has to choose.  

Secretly, in the deepest part of his heart, Ace had hoped Furiosa might one day be the heir. It’s not until she comes staggering back from the Bullet Farm, triumphant despite the concussion, that he realizes, in a way, she already is. 

She’s leaning hard on Max, and it’s still strange to see the stocky Wasteland scav allowed in her space, allowed to touch her the way he is. She’s always been so conservative with her body, with who she allows close. 

“ _ Ace _ .” She reaches for him, and it almost overbalances Max. He compensates with a grimace, and despite his bad leg, Ace is there too, and between the two of them, they keep the Boss upright. 

She’s muzzy with either pain or concussion, a curtain of dried blood crusted in the yellow paint on her face, but then she’s pulling his forehead against her, a hard bonk of contact that he doesn’t expect and doesn’t immediately understand. “It’s over,” she mumbles, and when he pulls back, her eyes are wet with tears, two clean trails cutting through the grime on her cheeks. “We did it,” she tells him thickly. “It’s ours. The Citadel - we’re free. We’re  _ free- _ ”

He’s a half-life who’s outlived his own expectations, and the Citadel has always been his haven. It’s been her prison for far longer than he’d known, and now she’s barely upright and shaking with the effort. This freedom, whatever it is, means more to Furiosa than it does to Ace. 

That’s okay. She’s still the Boss. He had no complaint with the Immortan, and now he’s got no complaint with Furiosa. “Take care of her,” Ace mutters to the feral. 

Trust still feels like an oddly-sized boot, but he’s gonna keep walking.  

 

****

 

Furiosa sleeps. Mari wakes her every few hours, or Cheedo does, checking her pupils and making her drink a little of some herbal concoction, and then letting her slide back into oblivion.

She doesn’t dream. She is boneless, she is a blank and empty desert, the luminous waste under a silver moon. She rises from the depths and reaches for Max, but there’s nothing - the bed is empty, and the place she’s come to identify as his has gone cold. She’s not even in her own room, she’s in the Vault, in the tiny alcove that smells of herbal antiseptic and half-remembered fever dreams. Panic spikes  _ hard _ -

“Mari made him go get food,” Val says calmly. She’s sitting stiffly in a nearby chair, fingers deftly working a needle through some leather clothing. “Got a good amount of meat on him,” she adds with a suggestive eyebrow. “Don’t want that one starving away to nothing, that’s for sure.”

Furiosa slowly starts breathing again, the yawning cavern of panic bleeding into a deeper, older ache. Seven thousand days apart, and even in the dunes, she and Val barely exchanged a dozen sentences - Furiosa  _ couldn’t _ , not then, not when she was still staggering beneath the shattering truth of the Green Place. She’d been little more than an unrecognizable ruin herself, but still Val had known her. That’s a gift she’s only starting to understand. 

Neither one is the girl she was, but this is Val, this is  _ Val _ . Furiosa hadn’t let herself think about it when the Rock Riders showed up. She hadn’t had time to just react, to let herself feel whatever it is she’s feeling. She does  _ not _ want Val here, but she  _ does _ . She is an engine, and she’s a person, and this is her  _ sister _ , and she feels utterly naked. Her eyes are suddenly hot and itching, and Furiosa reaches out with her human hand, muscles screaming against the movement. 

Val puts down her mending, and eases into bed beside Furiosa with a grimace, snagging a nearby cushion that she folds and stuffs between her knees. Furiosa’s ribs protest with a sharp pain that leaves her gasping, but she tucks herself into Val’s armpit, human fingers locked around Val’s. 

“Ey, that’s all right. That’s my girl,” Val murmurs, running her free hand across Furiosa’s hairless scalp. “Look at us, right? The pride of the Vuvalini.” She rolls her eyes in resigned nostalgia. “Spirits of wind and fire, we are. How are you feeling?”

It hurts to laugh, but Furiosa can’t help a damp chuckle that is more grief than humor. She hurts. Everything hurts. Her ribs ache and her head is pounding, and she feels oddly labile, torn between flashpoint screaming, delirious joy and bone-crushing sorrow. Toast has the Bullet Farm, Corpus is dead - and it was Corpus, the Blood, the son who got away - and the dizziness she feels might be freedom or impending fever.   

And this is Val, this is  _ Val _ . She smells of sweat and woman and old leather, and it should be comforting, but it isn’t, and it  _ is _ . Everything she is, everything she represents, everything she means to Furiosa’s past and present, it all presses onto her chest like a thousand-pound weight. Val is not dead, and Val is  _ alive _ , and she’s waiting, patiently, kindly, her eyes dark with a sympathy Furiosa craves and does not deserve.  

For two hundred days, it’s eaten at her. Mari knows the facts of her past, and Amy, and the girls, but Val - she’d thought Val had died for something she didn’t fully understand, that she’d thrown herself into Furiosa’s defense without ever knowing exactly what she was defending, and it’s eaten at her like bad guzzoline. 

Furiosa owes her the truth. Her stomach is a hot, hard knot of anxiety, nausea crawling into her mouth, but she has to say it. She’s waited too long, she should have confessed the day they rode out into the salt. The need to come clean rises like vomit. “I did this,” she rasps out, her pulse wild and thick. “This place - I helped build this.”

Val’s thumb moves in slow circles between Furiosa’s brows. “I know,” she says quietly. “And what a beautiful patch of green it’s becoming.”

Seven thousand days congeal sharp and bitter around her tongue, every atrocity and petty vengeance caught like a bone in her throat, and none of the words will come out. She wants to say she didn’t think she’d get back, she wants to say she’d been so trapped, she wants - she wants more than anything to say it’s not her fault, but it  _ is _ . Every life she’s taken, every drop of blood spilled, every moment of violence has been utterly her own-

And then Val’s words register. 

“Worse ends have come from better starts,” Val goes on. “I don’t know Joe, but I’ve heard enough.”

She is choking, every muscle of her body irreparably seized, an engine run without oil, without mercy. “I  _ helped _ him.” There’s a roar in her ears, the wild bellow of twin V8s, the insatiable gasp of the turbochargers. She is drowning in blood, burning from the inside out. 

“What Max said out on the Salt.” Valkyrie’s callused palm is cool on Furiosa’s forehead. “I didn’t understand, not until we got here.”

“He said hope is a mistake-”

“Daughter of Jo Bassa, I  _ broke _ for you,” Val says severely. “I will not stand for self-pity.”

Shame and pride spike in equal measures, because she is absolutely right, and then like shifting gears, the pressure crests and drops away. Furiosa is a hydraulic system with proper flow, she is lungs that breathe and a heart that beats. She is parts of flesh and metal, and together they form a conduit, the pipes in the skull, water tearing itself free in huge and shuddering torrents. 

Val hums and tucks Furiosa’s naked head against her shoulder. “That’s my girl,” she murmurs, “that’s my Furiosa.”

When a vehicle is broken, it’s taken down to its constituent pieces and parted out. Miss Giddy had a particular wordburger about swords and ploughshares that caused Angharad to glow with purpose, but it hadn’t made sense to Furiosa until she’d been elbow-deep in a windmill, trying to repair it with pieces of a trashed alternator. The alternator didn’t stop being part of a car, and she will never not be an Imperator, the Bag of Nails.  

At the Bullet Farm, she’d thought of Max, of freedom only in terms of her relationship with him. She’d wanted to run, to be stolen, to escape because for seven thousand days she’s been chafing at a rev limiter she can’t set. Suddenly, wildly, she wants to  _ stay _ , to let Capable get under her skin, to stand with Cheedo as she formally becomes Mari’s initiate. She wants to grow her hair back, to let Val brush it like she has when they were girls. She wants to watch Max unfold like some kind of rare flower, sprawled loose-limbed and vulnerable as he sleeps in the safety of her room. 

She wants to wake him up slowly, gently, working through his gears until they’re both revved far past their redline, and the want is utterly shattering in its possibility. 

Her ribs hurt from crying, every hiccup a sharp jolt of pain. She feels raw and rung-out, like the damp cloth Val presses to her forehead. It’s blissfully cool on her aching eyes. “We can talk,” Val murmurs, “but you should rest.”

Hope is not a mistake. It wasn’t in the Salt, and it isn’t now, and she doesn’t know how to say it. She just knows it’s true, and it shivers in the space between her lungs like a memory tucked against her heart. 


	147. Chapter 147

It takes the better part of a week for the dust to settle, but the change is swift and decisive. Almost immediately, the Actuary sends a tanker of guzzoline to the Citadel unprompted, delivered with a typically terse message: _The Imperator’s debt is discharged. Resume water deliveries and schedule revised trade negotiation ASAP._

“He’s afraid of us,” Dag observes with a smirk. “Doesn’t want us gunning for his tower.”

“He just wants to make sure we’re the ones doing the cleanup,” Capable says. She glances at Amy. “I’m okay with that.”

The old Vuvalini nods. “Our mess, but our people.”

For three days, there’s little news from the Bullet Farm, and Capable gnashes her teeth. The Rock Riders are elated with the success - and their plundered munitions, which she can’t in good faith deny them - but the lack of information is maddening. Corpus was the Blood, that much is known, but there’s little else that can be said.

Furiosa sinks into a fever. Mari doesn’t seem at all surprised. “Stabbed through the neck and then took out a warlord,” she grumbles, when Capable comes to ask. “Can only do a body good, right? Girl’s got at least two cracked ribs and a decent concussion, but that’s fine, just fine, completely something the human body can bounce back from.” To underscore her sarcasm, she rolls her eyes. “Don’t you worry, she’ll be back being her usual intractable self in no time at all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got _magic potions_ to mix.”

“We found antibiotic pills in the Organic Mechanic’s stash,” Cheedo explains later, when they’re tucked in the Salon for the night, Capable with Heirloom snuggled against her chest and Dag drowsing on her other shoulder. Amy knits on the bed in the corner, Maadi and Tamar curled around each other on the pillows near the table. “They’re old, but Mari says at the very least they won’t poison her.” She considers. “Bacteria is different. They’re little animals. The pills might not work if they’re the wrong kind. I hope this is the right kind.”

“Are we worried?” Dag asks sleepily.

“Mari says worry is a lack of preparation and practice.”

“It’s been a lifetime,” Amy mutters from across the room. The rhythm of her needles is a familiar, comfortable click. “Those drugs can’t be good.”

“Mari says they’re not from Before. She said there’s someone out there making them, or at least there was.” Cheedo frowns. “When I was little, there were people in Bartertown who sold things like that.”

“Do you think they’re still there?” Capable asks. “I mean, out there somewhere?”

“There was that scope,” Amy points out, peering at a line of stitches. “Military was good at hiding things, back in the day.”

Cheedo perks up. “If they’re out there, maybe we can trade with them. Maybe we can get new pills.”

“I like it _here_ ,” Tamar interjects, a little plaintive.

“We’re not going anywhere yet,” Capable assures her. “We’ve still got windmills to fix, and we owe the Riders water and guzzoline. Someday maybe we can send out scouts for trade, but we’ll get on our feet first.”

 

****

 

Signals are sent via polished mirrors, and Toast comes back from the Bullet Farm like a conquering queen, steel in her spine and a confident weight in her step. She brings with her scrap and ammunition and a few refugees from the mine, but Capable is more glad to see her sister, to embrace her and see her sardonic slouch across the Council table.

Furiosa is barely out of bed, but she’s there, bundled in a Vuvalini blanket despite the warming weather. The fever’s rendered her exhausted and irritable, and it’s compounded by her injured throat, leaving her unable to express her frustration and even more short-tempered. Max lingers nearby, as usual unwilling to take a seat at the table among the others. Extra chairs have been brought in for the Vuvalini, and for Raygear and Wilgee of the Rock Riders.

“This is Deet,” Toast announces, nodding to the dark, skinny little Bullet Farmer at her side. “They speak for the miners.”

“I’m glad you’ve come,” Capable says earnestly.

The Farmer shrugs, and stuffs hands missing more than a couple of fingers into their armpits. “Wanna see how this plays out. We got nothing to lose.”

The first order of business is basic supplies; now that the water is flowing again, the situation is much less dire, and Nakmin and Jilly are effusive in their praise of the Riders who have helped with repairs and harvest. Even Wilgee looks mollified.

Then, Toast stands up.  “I brought a present,” she announces, and hauls a large box up onto the table. “ _This_ is for the Citadel.”

It’s not obvious what it is - it bristles with wires and dials, with a caged stick that looks a little like the amplifier system used to address the Wretched - but amid the exclamations of confusion, Capable knows immediately it’s forbidden tech by the way the blood drains from Furiosa’s face. She sees Val lean over and squeeze Furiosa’s arm, and Joe’s former Imperator closes her eyes and tries to breathe.

“A _radio_ ,” breathes Amy, all but clapping her hands in delight. “Toast, is that a radio?”

“A-plus double prime,” Toast confirms, grinning. “Now we can talk without using the signal mirrors.”

Raygear frowns. “What do you mean, talk?”

“Deet?” Toast prompts, and the Bullet Farm miner lifts a car battery and sets it by the box. With a couple quick movements, Toast connects a few wires, and the box gives an unholy squeal. She adjusts one of the knobs and the squeal gets quieter. Another knob is turned, and the squeal is replaced by a scratchy tone that is undeniably from Before.

“It works,” Amy says, eyes wide. “It _works_.”

Toast raises an eyebrow. “Just you wait.” She raises the mouthpiece to her lips, and twists the second dial until the scratchy tone smoothes out. “Ello, can you hear me?” There’s a moment of silence, and she adjusts the dial again. “Ello, are you there?”

 _“I’m here! I can hear you!”_ The voice is coming through the device, like on Joe’s amplifier, but tinny, small. It’s undeniably Ello. _“Boss, am I clear?”_

“Tell me where you’re standing right now,” Toast says, practically vibrating with glee.

 _“Standing in the control room of the main smelter at the Bullet Farm,”_ comes the answer. _“Vee eight, I can’t believe this actually works.”_

Keno looks utterly dumbfounded. “That’s - that’s _Ello_.”

Capable feels like her chest might explode. “Toast, this means we can talk. We’re not tied to the signal mirrors. We can coordinate supply runs. This changes _everything_.”

Toast is still grinning. “Ello, I’m gonna turn this thing off, but keep someone nearby for when we get it hooked back up.”

 _“Sure thing, boss.”_ Then, with utter delight: “ _Listen, this is how they told me to end it: Ello out.”_

Toast flips a switch and the radio dies. The room is completely silent, everyone staring and considering the possibilities.

“ _Well_ ,” Plenty finally declares. “That’s a thing I never expected.”

“Witchcraft,” growls Wilgee, but there’s no venom in the statement, just wariness.

“I don’t understand,” Cheedo says. “So the Bullet Farm has these? Did Joe have them?”

Capable glances at Furiosa. She’s clutching at Val’s arm, her knuckles white, and she stiffly gives her head a single shake.

“That doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” wails Cheedo. “It’s so _useful-”_

“Anyone who’s got a radio can hear you, too,” Amy warns. “Not saying it’s likely, and this is good, girl, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t know who else is listening.”

Keno frowns. “What do you mean, who else has them? How can they hear?”

Amy takes a breath, her hands making a vague motion to describe a concept Capable _knows_ none of them have the framework to really understand. “It’s like...sunlight. You can’t see it, it’s a different frequency. It’s a cloud. It extends a certain difference from the transmitter - Ello - and anyone with a receiver - like Toast - can pick up that signal.”

“Like water?” Capable guesses. “It’s a big pool, and anyone with a bucket can take some.”

Amy looks to Maadi for help, who shrugs. “Don’t look at me,” Maadi says. “ _You_ were the soldier. I was a bank teller. I don’t know shit about radios.”

“Does this have anything to do with the satellites?” Dag interjects.

“More important, do the Buzzards have this?” Raygear breaks in. “If they can hear us, they can find us.”

“Us?” Wilgee snorts. “En’t no ‘us’, just these ones. We’re leaving.”

“So we invent a code,” Maadi suggests. “So they can’t know.”

Amy inclines her head, considering. “That would work. It’s been done before.”

“What about Gastown?” Plenty leans forward. “We’ve got our people at the Bullet Farm, but Gastown’s got the Actuary, and he’s got his own interests.”

Capable sees Furiosa glance meaningfully at Max, and he gives her an almost imperceptible nod. “He’ll have one,” Max says, a rare contribution. His gaze flicks back to Furiosa, as if talking to the group is more than he can handle. “If there’s a transmitter at the Bullet Farm, he’s already got a receiver.”

“I never saw anything like this,” Capable says doubtfully.

“That was the People Eater, though,” Toast says. “He did whatever Joe wanted, and if Joe didn’t have one, he wouldn’t.” She turns to Keno. “We’ve never found any radio equipment in Joe’s rooms, right?”

He chews on a lip, raising his eyes to the ceiling as he thinks. “Don’t know we would have _known_. There’s electrical, yeah, but…” He doesn’t quite look at Furiosa, but his head twitches in her direction. “Anything more than cars or lights…”

“Forbidden,” Amy agrees grimly. “As if the bastards didn’t already bomb us back to the Stone Age.”

“Joe used the signal light. We can _see_ Gastown, so a radio would have been nothing.” Toast twists a chunk of hair into a spiral, thinking hard. “He was a warlord - maybe he didn’t want anyone trying to talk to his people, so he just banned everything that wasn’t useful.”

Amy snorts. “Night vision would be damned useful.”

“But it contains a circuit board,” Tamar interjects thoughtfully. “You…” She scowls, clawing her way around a particularly difficult phrase, finally settling on, “...ban the pieces, ban the pistol.” She looks at Furiosa. “Right?”

Furiosa is struggling. Capable can see it in her face. “Control,” Val says quietly. “Maybe he didn’t want to risk anyone communicating with the outside world.”

“We wouldn’t have done that,” Keno says, alarmed. “We _wouldn’t_ have. Boss, tell her. We didn’t know. We thought it was good.”

“Maybe you thought that because no one told you otherwise,” Val goes on, her tone mild and unjudging. “You listened to Capable and the others. Who’s to say you wouldn’t have listened if someone had tried to talk to you on a radio?”

His brows crumple together, troubled.

“Might have told someone Joe’s weaknesses too,” Amy points out. “You’ve got this thing now - you’re going to need to be careful who uses it, and who they’re talking to.”

“Whispering in the dark,” Dag says. She glances conspiratorially at her sisters. “ _We_ did that.”

The promise of the radio suddenly feels too big and too much of a liability. “Furiosa,” Capable says. “I need to know what you think. Is this something we should use?”

“Crazy, that’s what that one is,” Wilgee mutters, and Raygear silences her with a frown.

Capable taking a risk. Furiosa is present, but the moment in the garage is not even two weeks past, and Furiosa is sick, and she’s _fighting_ , she can see it, but Capable can’t trust that the years of Joe’s indoctrination won’t win.

Still. She needs to know, and if nothing else, she trusts Furiosa’s sense of self-preservation.

There’s a long moment of silence. Toast has both hands clutching the radio’s mouthpiece as if she’s afraid it’s going to be taken away. Plenty leans forward, like she’s ready to argue hard if Furiosa says no.

Finally, Furiosa visibly swallows. “Yes,” Joe’s former Imperator croaks out. “Do it.”

Capable wants to hug her, a rush of elation flooding her veins. Her faith isn’t misplaced. This could work, this could actually _work_.

“Atta girl,” Amy murmurs, uncharacteristically gentle. Then, as her usual forthright self: “I think this will be good. It’s not without its risks, but I think the benefits outweigh that.”

“If it becomes a danger, we can always destroy it,” Keno adds, and then flinches at Toast’s glare. “We _can_ , I’m not saying we’re _gonna_.”

“Radio,” Tamar says wistfully. “Maybe we can have our own shows.”

“Some Farmers know the guts,” the miner Deet offers. “Could help set it up.”

“Good,” says Capable, and she can’t help echo Toast’s grin. “We can pay for your time in water. Now, where shall we put it?”

“The skull,” Cheedo suggests excitedly. “By the amplifier.”

Plenty nods. “He controlled us from there. Makes it a nice fuck you.”

“A radio room,” Maadi says, and pats Tamar’s hand. “That’ll be nice. That’ll be nice indeed.”


	148. Chapter 148

Capable is working on her ledger in the Council room, sitting in one chair with her legs propped up on another, the book in her lap while Heirloom naps on her chest. Dag’s daughter is three weeks old and is gaining weight steadily. There’s always someone to hold her, willing breasts to suckle her, and what seems like an army of many mothers ready to rock and soothe and change her. Few of the Pups have ever seen a baby, and whenever possible there’s a gaggle of three or four offering to sit perfectly still while a mother places her in their arms. 

She is utterly perfect, and Capable is so in love she aches.

She works quietly, her pencil scratching against the weathered paper as she records meeting notes and repair updates. With the influx of fuel and scrap and the help of the Rock Riders, Keno’s crew has twenty-two of the windmills back up, which is enough power for two of the three water pumps. Toast is back at the Bullet Farm, but before she’d gone, she and Cheedo had drawn up big plans for water storage and reclamation. “These will be safe to eat,” Dag had added, pressing a bag of seeds into Toast’s hands. “Beans, corn, a few others. I looked it up. They’ll grow in bad soil, and the fruit won’t be poison.”

“Bless tomatoes,” Maadi agreed. 

It’s been three days since Toast left. Capable missed her the first time, and she misses her now. It’s a hard absence she’s going to have to come to terms with, but it still hurts. Toast has never said who brought her to Joe, but Capable has always suspected it was Kalashnikov’s men, and she knows being able to transform his stronghold is a special vengeance. 

Heirloom makes a quiet noise, sleepily rooting at Capable’s breast. She’s been fed, so she isn’t hungry, just looking for comfort, and Capable adjusts her shirt and lets the baby latch on. It’s a small gesture, nutritionally useless, but the contact is electric, tingling, and she hums as her entire body responds. The ledger slips closed, forgotten. 

She can’t think of what’s possible, she can’t even dream, but she  _ wants _ . She wants siblings for Heirloom, a family that feels as safe and powerful as she feels around her own sisters. She wants siblings for the Pups, ones that will speak of them and remember them when their half-lives are over. She doesn’t know if she can, herself, but maybe,  _ maybe _ \- 

She wants it so badly. She loves Heirloom, loves her fiercely and wildly and with an energy she’d never known she could feel. Dag is ambivalent toward her daughter at best, and Capable can’t be upset with her, she  _ can’t _ , but something violently maternal rears up inside her nonetheless and makes her want to scream. 

Cheedo finds her later, drowsing with the baby peaceful and drooling on her bare skin. Unaccountably embarrassed, Capable tucks herself away. “I know it’s not- she was just-”

“Mari says skin to skin contact is really healthy,” Cheedo assures her, and pulls up a chair. She frowns. “Are you okay?”

She’s caught up in the closeness of the baby, in missing Toast, in the remembered ache of Furiosa’s face at the Council table. Everything is getting better, she knows that, but right at this moment, she doesn’t want anything to do with the heavy business of statecraft - she just wants to hold Heirloom, to let her world shrink until all it contains is perfect little person in her arms. “Just tired,” she admits. 

“Can I help with anything?” Cheedo asks, and Capable reaches over and grabs her sister’s hand, squeezing tightly, her heart too full to speak. Cheedo, who had been the most ambivalent about leaving the Vault, who tried to run back to Joe as soon as they’d gotten through the canyon - she’s grown sturdy and practical, calluses on her palms from hours of stirring poultices and tinctures, her hair tucked up in a tidy pile under a Vuvalini scarf. 

When she can, she takes a breath, and teases, “Are you here to steal the baby back?”. 

Cheedo laughs. “I wouldn’t dare.” She bounces a leg nervously. “I want to do my initiation when Furiosa’s well enough to stand for it, maybe in a week or two? Dag wants a party, but I don’t know-”

“We have a lot to celebrate,” Capable says reasonably. “I’m with Dag on this one - the Riders are going to leave soon, and it might do well to include them.”

Cheedo’s eyes go wide. “I don’t want them- I mean, that’s too many people-”

“No! Your initiation could be just for us, whoever you want there,” Capable assures her. “But a larger celebration would be really good for morale.” Capable doesn’t know anything about Vuvalini initiation; she hadn’t known anything about it until Furiosa had stood at the base of Valkyrie’s honey trap, arms akimbo as she declared Katie Concannon as her initiate mother. She doesn’t feel any special connection to any of the Vuvalini, not in the way Cheedo does. Capable is perfectly happy to start her own dynasty, and any attempts to tease more information about the Vuvalini from Furiosa have been met with awkward silence. Still, it’s been far too long since everyone had a break. 

Her sister grins. “Maybe Jilly will make more amaranth cakes.”

 

****

 

When breathing is easier, when her ribs are a dull ache instead of a sharp pain and it’s painful but not impossible to swallow, Mari declares her fit for light duty, and Furiosa leaves the Vault. 

That night, she finds herself in the room the girls have dubbed the Salon, surrounded by the circle of her kin. 

With a quick, nervous glance around, Cheedo clears her throat and squares her shoulders. “I’ve called you here to declare myself.” 

The words are old. There’s no set scripture, just a sort of hand-me-down formality. Every bit of Vuvalini culture is like a quilt that gets repaired, colors added and threads replaced, but the original pattern is still somehow maintained. 

Max isn’t here. He’d demurred, mumbling something about how it wasn’t for him, it was for the girls, and then he’d disappeared into the black grease of his car. 

Furiosa almost wishes she’d done the same. There’s a hard ache in this event, a burning behind her eyes as Cheedo speaks. Tamar had been the last initiate of the Green Place - no, not Tamar, Denny? But Denny wasn’t here, hadn’t been among the survivors, and no one’s spoken her name. 

There are a lot of names gone unspoken. 

Val leans on the wall, the lines around her eyes showing the strain of navigating the towers. There are supply lifts she can ride, and a hugely extensive system of ropes that tower denizens use to rappel up and down, but inside, it’s largely stairs, and although Val hasn’t admitted it, she’s hurting. Rappelling would be faster, but Furiosa suspects that Val’s injury largely restricts the upper-body movements required to support her own weight.  

Furiosa did that, she convinced them all-

Val catches her staring and raises an eyebrow, and it’s so much like Katie - a wordless warning that is both stern and fond:  _ you know better than that _ \- that Furiosa is arrested mid-thought. 

Val is here. Val is alive. That’s what matters. None of them are the nimble girls they once were, but they are here. They are together. 

“Who are you?” Amy asks. “Why are you here?” It’s redundant to what Cheedo’s just said, but this is part of the ritual, and Cheedo knows it. 

The girl once called Fragile draws herself upright. “My name is Cheedo. I am the daughter of Minda of Bartertown. I was brought to the Citadel by Furiosa of the Vuvalini. My clan is Boltcutter.” She glances at Furiosa with a grin, as if being traded for Joe to rape was something to rejoice, and Furiosa’s heart clenches hard in her chest. Cheedo looks back to Mari. “I am here to request to be your initiate.”

“Furiosa stands as a mother,” Amy says. “Furiosa - do you speak in support of this?”

There was another circle, another day, another lifetime. Furiosa stood where Cheedo stands now, Mary Jo Bassa a solid presence at her side. Furiosa had been younger, not far past menarche, but she’d been certain, secure in the knowledge that Katie wanted her, utterly confident that formalizing their relationship would create nothing that didn't already exist. Katie had been her initiate mother in practice if not in name since Furiosa had been old enough to walk; that wasn’t necessarily the usual way, but it was her truth, and she’d thrilled with the opportunity to declare herself. It felt big and important, the first step towards having her own initiate some day. Val had been there, fiercely, envious: it would be another year of hard bargaining before she convinced Jeddah to formally accept her.

Furiosa has never had an initiate, not like she thought she would. She cannot put that name to any of the War Boys she’s trained, just like she cannot put Ace in the same category as Katie despite everything her mentors have in common. 

“Well?” Amy prompts. 

Seven thousand days Furiosa has tried to forget the Green Place, tried to bury it like excrement because it was too painful to bear, too heavy a memory to carry. It wasn't until Angharad seized upon her, dragged the story out of her, that she'd started remembering. It bubbles up like water at odd moments, clear and unexpected, every fragment like one of the bright green pieces from Before, both precious and forbidden. 

“Cheedo chooses for herself.” It’s Mary Jo Bassa’s words in Furiosa’s voice, the shape of them like smooth stones in her mouth. Her throat tightens, the air suddenly too thick to breathe. “I stand behind whatever decision she makes.”

Amy gives her a brief, approving nod. “And you,” she says to Mari, “who are you and why are you here?”

“I am Anmanari, called Mari,” Mari says. “I am the daughter of the woman called Fanno. I was initiated by the end of the world.” She reaches out and takes Cheedo’s hands. “Knowledge is hard to attain. It must be fought for, defended, protected. You understand this. You know its value. You sought it out when we didn’t know each other, and you’ve dedicated yourself tirelessly to its service. By declaring you as my initiate, I accept the responsibility of teaching you and guiding you. In return, you are charged with protecting the quilt of our knowledge, to maintain and repair and add to it as best you can. Do you agree to this?”

“Yes,” Cheedo says fervently. “I do.” 

“That’s my girl,” Mari murmurs, and it is done. The chain of mothers, the one Furiosa had for so long feared was broken, gains another link. 


	149. Chapter 149

The celebration is epic. First as a Wife, and then as an Imperator, she’s seen parties thrown by the Immortan, lavish displays of wealth intended to impress and intimidate, where the wise kept quiet and the foolish got raucous. She’s gotten drunk with the crews in the aftermath of a successful War, each toast to those Witnessed louder than the next. There was the harvest festival, the celebration of the first successful crops grown in a liberated Citadel.

From somewhere deep in her bones, she remembers a circle of women, relaxed faces lined with exposure to sun and sand, passing around cups and leaning against each other in laughter.

This? This is everything.

Once the War Boys and Rock Riders get done posturing - once the drink starts to warm their blood - they’re fast companions, warriors with a love for engines and blood. They’ve worked together now for tens of days, but old rivalries run fierce and deep. The Riders’ tanks are loaded with extra in panniers and on sledges, both water and guzzoline; they have been paid what Furiosa owed, paid for their work, and given extra as a gesture of good faith. Furiosa doesn’t know the details of the exchange - she’s still wobbling with fatigue, and has assiduously avoided the Council discussions unless Capable physically steers her into the room - but somehow, she can accept that. It’s not her place to negotiate this.

It’s a realization almost as freeing as the moment she’d turned the wheel.

The noise is intense. There’s food and singing and yelling, a dense crush of celebration. The hot musk of human sweat mingles with the simple, filling food Jilly and her crew have gleefully concocted: a thick stew of witchetties and chia seeds, with rare chunks of roast goanna like hidden treasure amid the more plentiful ingredients. There’s dense, crumbling amaranth cakes, flavored with herbs from Dag’s gardens, and a few precious fruits, cut into tiny morsels so everyone can have a taste. There’s fermented millet beer, an experiment Mari started and Nakmar eagerly embraced, both for its recreational value and its ability to preserve some of the carefully hoarded grain.

Toward the end of the night, she sees Capable and Keno sneak off into the darkness, clutching at each other and giggling like Pups. Cheedo nudges Dag with undisguised glee; her sister rolls her eyes and shifts Heirloom to her other breast.

The energy of the space is overwhelming, and Furiosa has to breathe hard to keep from choking on it. It isn’t bad, just...foreign. She’s not afraid, she’s not swallowing back the guzzoline-fire swell of adrenaline, the all-consuming urge to fight or flee, and that in itself feels strange, the expected inertia of a hard brake that never comes. She hangs at the edge of the room, skirting the shadows, tethered by uncertainty.

“You’re hiding,” Valkyrie says, coming up behind her and slipping her arms around Furiosa.. She rests her chin on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Furiosa makes herself nod. “It’s just...loud.” It’s too much. Too many people, too much happiness. Val’s body is a hard, hot line against her back, the contact sizzling like wayward voltage.

“It’s hard for you to enjoy this,” Val says quietly. It’s not a question. “Is it because you think you don’t deserve this?”

She can’t answer that. She can’t lie to Val, and she can’t form the words to tell her truth.

Her silence is all the answer Val needs. With one gentle hand, she palms the side of Furiosa’s head. “Do you know what my first thought was, out there by the tower? The day you came back to us?”

Furiosa shakes her head.

“I heard you, and I knew it was you.” Val rocks a little like she’s comforting a child, her voice warm with the memory. “I knew that voice. Even if you hadn’t said, I’d have known you, but once I was on the ground-” her arms tighten reflexively around Furiosa’s shoulders- “I thought, _mothers_ , what have they done to her.”

Furiosa understands. She’s sure it was a shock, showing up after seven thousand days with her long hair shaved down to her scalp and a metal claw where she’d once had a hand-

“It’s been years,” Val goes on, “and I get that. Time is unkind to us all. It’s just…” She strokes the side of Furiosa’s head, almost in reassurance. Her voice goes tight and small. “You just looked so _hard_ , like all the life had been boiled out of you.  And then when you didn’t know - I couldn’t tell you, and it was too late, I couldn’t tell the others not to tell you…I thought that would be the end of you.”

Furiosa realizes she’s shaking. They both are. Her human fingers are cold, clinging tightly to Val’s free hand, her naked stump tucked hard against her chest.. “I didn’t-” she croaks, but there’s nothing to say.

“All the light went out of you,” Val whispers. “I _watched_ it. It was like watching a fire go out, like the death of the _sun_. I didn’t understand. I just wanted it back.”

Her throat is too tight to speak, and the room blurs despite her best effort.

“I would have done _anything_ ,” Val says fiercely, “ _anything_ to get that back. Do you understand? So you don’t for _one second_ get to feel sorry for me, because I regret nothing. It’s been hard. We’ve suffered too. But I’ve been free, and you haven’t, and I didn’t _understand_ until I got here, Furi. I didn’t understand at all. I’ve been here a handful of days, and I can’t even begin to fathom what you’ve been through.” She gestures to the celebrating crowd with her free hand. “Look at these people, Furi. I’ve only heard a little, only what the girls have told us, only what we can see from looking around, but if they’ve been through the same thing as you...look at them now. They have a _chance_ now.”

She can’t swallow back the tears, can’t choke them down, and the effort is bruising. Val hums and tucks her head against Furiosa’s own, long dark hair catching on the first rough tendrils of stubble. “I didn’t think you were coming back,” Val admits hoarsely. “When you walked through the garage, covered in that yellow paint - I thought that was the last time I’d see you, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go to you. I couldn’t. Your eyes - it was like you were already _gone_.”

The noise that comes out of Furiosa is inhuman, a strangled hiccup, and she presses her face into Val’s hair, gritting her teeth. She is a burst pipe, she is a boiling engine, she is-

“He brought you back,” Val says quietly. “I was so- out on Salt, he told you to turn and you turned. It wasn’t my place, I have no claim on you, but I didn’t-” _trust him_ , she doesn’t say, but Furiosa hears it anyway. “But then he brought you back, and you’re _alive_ , and _look_ at this place, Furi. Look at it.”

She can’t, she _can’t_ , it’s all too bright, and she’s a wheel-locked trailer, swinging wildly on its hitch-

“You did this, Furi,” Val says. “You’re building this. This is _yours_ as much as it is theirs. Don’t you see that?”

She _wants_ to, mothers, she does, but there’s so much blood on her hands-

“I was wrong.” Val coughs, clearing her throat. “I was so wrong. Your light isn’t gone. It’s in all of _this_.” Before Furiosa can miserably shake her head, Val presses hard against her scalp, pinprick fingernails sharp and grounding. “Let yourself have this, daughter of Jobassa.”

She’s erased her water debt, and that, at least, is some small redemption. The rest of it? She doesn’t know if what she’s done can ever be forgiven. There can’t be forgiveness, not for the lives she’s taken, not for the ways she’s taken them.

“Not everything needs to be forgiven,” Val says quietly. “Some things can’t be erased, but maybe they shouldn’t be.”

Furiosa frowns.

“We keep moving.” Val gently turns her until they’re forehead to forehead. “I can’t absolve you of anything, my love, I can’t. But if you keep walking, you can make this change your legacy. Make them remember you for what you choose to be, when you have the freedom to choose."

_Oh._

She makes herself look at Val, makes herself make eye contact as if her chest hasn’t been violently split open, as if Val’s undeniable logic isn’t suddenly a raging firestorm melting her down to glass. She can’t make a sound. She can barely breathe past the blazing clot in her throat.

At that second, one of the Pups runs up, an amaranth cake held in his outstretched hands. “Marisaidtogiveyouthis,” the Pup bursts out in a rush.

“ _Now_?” Val’s voice is careful, but her grip on Furiosa’s shoulders tightens.

“...earlier,” the Pup admits, about as mortified as a child could be. “I forgot.” The cake is, in fact, more than slightly crumbled.

“Here,” Val says, cupping her hands to receive the treat. “I’ll make sure it gets eaten, okay?”

The Pup nods smartly and then dashes back off, tagging one of the treadmillers’ children, and together the boys duck into the sea of taller adults, disappearing into the crowd.

For a long moment, Val holds the mashed handful of cake. She considers it carefully. “It’s...rather sticky,” she finally says, and the tension snaps. The first burst of laughter comes out like a strange, hitched cough and Furiosa almost chokes on it. Val snorts in response, and then her rich, full laugh embraces them both. She can’t stop, and Furiosa can’t stop, and then they’re leaning against each other, the amaranth cake cradled between them.

It’s not the cake. It’s not the Pup. It’s everything. It’s the hard ache in her chest, the way Val’s laugh claws at something deep and precious inside, digging like a goanna until it’s dragged to the surface. It’s the way she felt like she’d never be happy again, but here’s Val - here’s _Val_ \- and all the things Val’s said are sinking into Furiosa’s stomach like warm peach liqueur.

It takes Furiosa a long time to catch her breath. Every moment she manages to gasp, Val starts laughing again, and Furiosa can’t stop, even when her face feels like a seized engine and she’s bent double hugging her ribs.

In unspoken agreement, they find some nearby crates and gratefully collapse. “Do you want it?” Val manages, offering up the cake, and Furiosa can only shake her head. “Your loss,” her sister says, and licks the crumbs from her palm.

She feels...raw. Alive. As if she’s driving pursuit and at the top of her revs, only a thin, half-rotted floorboard between her and the sand beneath.

She’d forgotten about this. She’d _forgotten_. She’s been so buried-

“I missed you,” Furiosa blurts, and then, “I _still_ miss you.”

Val wipes her hands on her thighs. “When the Rock Riders leave,” she says carefully, “I might go with them.” The shock of it must show on Furiosa’s face, because she quickly adds, “it’s easier for me to be on a bike. These towers-” she makes a sweeping gesture- “it’s _hard_ -”

“We could _build-_ ”

“Furi. Don’t.” She closes her hands around Furiosa’s frozen fingers. “Tamar and Maadi will stay here. They want to. It’s easier for me to ride than it is to climb, and I can help smooth things between the Citadel and the Riders. This isn’t my place,” she says gently. “If I stay, I’m trapped. I’m useless. If I go, I’m a day’s ride away, at most. I’ll have more mobility.”

Her argument is unassailable, and Furiosa _can’t_ , but there’s a sharp stab of panic anyway.

“I need this, Furi,” Val murmurs. “I _want_ this.”

If she asks Val to stay, if she comes up with a good enough reason beyond the unreasonable whirl in her head-

“You have to, then,” she hears herself croak. “You _have_ to.”

Val squeezes her hand. “I just need to know that you’ll be okay.”

Furiosa makes herself nod, makes herself swallow and rub her stump across her face. “We keep moving,” she manages.

Val’s embrace is complete, her hard, wiry body so different from Max’s comfortable bulk. “That’s my girl,” she whispers. “That’s the light I know.”

They sit there for a long time, not speaking, wrapped around each other and watching the party. “When?” Furiosa finally asks.

“A few days. We’ll repair the spring, and I’ll try to convince them to come trade in six months. Wilgee will resist, but Raygear knows they need the fuel. It won’t be long.” She nudges Furiosa’s shoulder. “...or you’ll come to us, you and your road warrior.”

The heat that crawls up her neck is wholly unexpected. Seven thousand days, and then another two hundred and eight, and Val’s still able to see all the things Furiosa cannot say.

“You’re not comfortable here,” Val says, and fondly kisses the top of Furiosa’s head. “And he’s not here, either.”

He isn’t, and Furiosa doesn’t want to admit that the absence burns in the pit of her stomach, making her jittery with need. He’s probably down in the garage, or up on the terraces. Anywhere but here, where the heat of a hundred happy bodies turns the air to a physical weight in her lungs. Even with Val here, even with the gentle pressure of Val’s shoulder against her own, she feels wrung out and over-exposed.  

Valkyrie is too goddamn shrewd. She’s always been. She always sees.

“Go to him,” Val says, and winks. “I’ll cover for you.”

“I love you,” Furiosa says thickly.

Val leans over and kisses her cheek. “I know. Now _get_.”

Val eases herself onto her feet, and Furiosa watches her move away. Somehow the stiffness of her gait still has that familiar motion, the self-assured sway of her hips. Back amid the circle of women, Furiosa sees her bend toward one of the Rock Riders, leaning confidently into the other woman’s space. The Rider grins and nods, and easily slips an arm around Valkyrie’s waist.

Oh.

_Oh._

It’s jarring, but it doesn’t feel like a betrayal. It feels...natural. Appropriate. Of course Val has taken other lovers. Of course she expects Furiosa to do the same.

_We keep moving._

Her heart is suddenly pounding in the meat of her tongue, a lightheaded, terrifying cadence. She needs to go find Max.


	150. Chapter 150

It takes a while to find him, but in the end, he’s up on the terraces.

“It’s just me,” she says, when he flinches at her approach. His posture instantly changes, and he twists around to see her, squinting in the darkness.

“How’s the party?”

“Loud.” She drops down next to him. She doesn’t have to say she’s still skirting the edge of a good, hard cry, the muscles around her ribs aching. She’s still shaking, as close to breaking as an over-bent strut, so she’d ducked into one of the supply rooms and snagged a small bottle of Mari’s infused vodka on the way out, and now she twists off the plastic cap and takes a swig before offering it to him, coughing as the alcohol hits the back of her throat. “I needed some air.” The taste of the herbs lingers on her tongue, sharp and green.

He hums in agreement, and considers the vodka. “This is...plants?”

“It’s medicinal.” She glances sideways at him. “It may be stolen.”

He snorts, and takes a long draft.

They pass the bottle back and forth until it’s gone, and then sit in the cold, quiet darkness. The alcohol is a pleasant burn in her belly, and she pulls her knees up to her chest, letting the warmth crawl up her spine and into her limbs.

The night is thick and black, a sliver of moon waning on the horizon. Smoke from Wretched fires drifts up, bringing the faint chemical tang of whatever they’ve scrounged from Gastown’s noxious moat. Overhead, the stars are a bright, dusty smear, and as she watches, one makes its lazy path across the sky.

“Satellite,” Furiosa says quietly.

She can’t see him nod, but she feels the movement. Behind them, the canola rustles in the breeze, a soft susurrus of green that jars loose memories of being small and safe.

Seven thousand days, plus two hundred and eight more, and she’s never had a moment to just....sit. Not on watch, not in a sniper’s nest, not on patrol; no obligation to do anything but just listen to her own breath.

In the distance, the burn stacks of Gastown’s refinery towers flicker and flare, the miasmic cloud of fumes hanging in an orange glow around the city. Max points to a cluster of lights twinkling further out. “Looks like Toast has things up and running.”

Furiosa chuckles. “Yeah. I imagine it took her all of an hour.”

He huffs.

They sit for a while in companionable silence, and when the wind picks up, she shifts until they’re pressed together. She gently snakes her human arm around his bad knee.

“They’re, mm. Not looking for you?” he asks.

She shrugs.

“Seems like, mm. Clan’s missed you.”  

They both know why she’s not with them. She doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t push the issue.

Her body’s loose and relaxed, but she can still feel the tendrils of panic creeping into her throat, forming a question she can’t avoid asking. “Do you think people can change?”

_Make them remember you for what you choose to be, when you have the freedom to._

“Sometimes.” He picks at a thumbnail. “Got to want to. Got to be able.”

Gastown glows, and the Bullet Farm is a necklace of tiny stars. She swallows hard. “..are we free now?”

He doesn’t answer, instead dropping his hand onto her human arm where it’s resting on his brace. His fingers move in little circles, a small, unconscious gesture. “Means a lot of different things, that.”

“What’s it mean for you?” It’s the closest thing she’s ever come to asking about his future, what he wants, what he plans to do. She doesn’t even know for herself; she’s spent too long concentrating on the next breath, and anything further feels like idle dreaming.

His body is warm against hers, though. She thinks of revving engines and wide, open desert.

“Car,” he says immediately, then, more considered, “...a destination, maybe.”

“Where would you go?”

He grunts, noncommital. Only the brief pressure of his fingertips gives away the frisson of anxiety.

She watches the shivering flares at the tip of Gastown’s towers. She feels like that, volatile and unstable, a brief, guttering heat. ”I don’t know what I want, either.” Fanging it, she swallows hard. “You said maybe together-”

“Yeah.” It’s out before she can even finish her sentence. He nods in the darkness. “Meant it.”

“Still?” He’s clenching up, and she is too, but she’s a little drunk and the words are spilling out, uncatchable as water in her hands.

He hums. “Not the kind of thing to, mm, take back.”

_Redemption._

“Will we ever get there?”

“Even if we don’t,” he says, “...best to keep driving, mm?”

 _We keep moving_.

Somewhere on the other side of the canola, on the far side of the terraces, the Milker on watch starts singing, a distant, wordless melody to amuse herself. The sound rises and falls with the wind, bobbing across the field like a bike over the dunes.

“Val’s leaving with the Rock Riders,” Furiosa says quietly. “She told me tonight.”

“Mm. You?”  This is hesitant, careful. She hasn’t ever told him, but somehow, he knows.

How is this her life, that both of these extraordinary people have chosen to love her? There is no amount of redemption that could make her deserving of this. Even with the vodka, she feels more than a little drunk with the luck of it all.  

He’s still waiting for an answer, but unhurried, without pressure. He won’t hold her if she wants to go; he never would. She considers his profile in the darkness, the curve of his lips and the soft fuzz on his cheeks. “She told me to come find you.”

He hums, ducking his head in what may actually be satisfaction.

When it gets too cold to stay outside, they stumble back to her room, taking the long way around the tower to avoid the festivities. Inside, there’s a moment of indecision when she leans against the door, bolting it in place.

“Are you…?” He frowns, a hand fluttering vaguely.  

She leans forward and grabs his collar. “Kiss me, Fool.” Her ribs ache and her neck aches, but there’s too much in her head, too many things left unsolved. She feels unmoored, and more than anything else she just needs to feel him, to touch him, to taste him.

It’s been too long. When she was recovering in the Vault, he’d been at the edges of her vision, a constant, steady presence at her back as she slept. She’d reached for him in a fevered haze, and he’d held himself back, kissing her chastely and tucking her back in. Now, her body is suddenly humming with frustrated desire like an engine whining against the clutch.

She’s healed _enough_.

Their mouths meet in a hot rush. He is sweeter than water, and she is starving. She can’t open herself wide enough, can’t bury herself deep enough. He is so aware of his own strength - he’s tightly bound, clenched hard against the possibility that he might hurt her - but she needs to feel him unrestrained. She wants to see him utterly unraveled.

She bites his lip, trapping him for a moment between her teeth, not hard enough to draw blood, but just hard enough that his entire body lurches to a halt. It’s like a hard restart of an engine, and for a long, breathless moment, neither of them move. She can feel his heart pounding beneath her hand.

She lets him go. He’s still frozen, muscles primed for movement and almost quivering with the effort of being still. “Fool,” she breathes into his mouth, the word a hiss of steam on a boiling engine. “Don’t you dare hold back.”

His eyes go black as oil.

Once, he’d stepped into view from behind the War Rig, dragging a War Boy and a car door and brandishing a shotgun that didn’t work. She’d hit him then, a running tackle that sent them both to the ground. In that moment, both of them desperately grappling in the sand, she hadn’t known that someday she’d let him be that close on purpose, that she’d want him that close and be aching for him to be closer, the musk of sand and guzzoline and leather dizzying and thick in her lungs. She couldn’t have imagined this.

So much of where she is now, she couldn’t have imagined then.

 _Who_ she is, even.

The words hang in the air between them for several long heartbeats, and then he surges up against her, pressing into her, his own need bright and flaring.

She thinks he might be like the moon, waxing and waning but somehow still steady. She’d known before they even made the Rock Riders’ canyon that he knows how to keep going, that he understands instinctively, intimately, the harsh calculus of survival.

 _Maybe...together...we can find some sort of redemption_.

He palms her scalp, the calluses of his fingers dragging across newly-sprouted stubble, and groans as she sucks a mark into the delicate skin below his jaw.  

She suddenly remembers that moment out on the road, when he’d parked the rig between her and the Citadel and gave her a choice. He’d handed her his gun, and told her to choose.  

She’d been so close to making the wrong choice. She wouldn’t have shot herself, wouldn’t have bothered to waste a bullet on her own skull; she’d just have let herself dissolve instead. She’d have ground herself down to the barest particle, like the sparks thrown by a welder, like a dune collapsing in the wind. She’d have let herself get swept under Joe’s legacy, an artifact, an anachronism.

She’d have gone under the wheels, and she’d have gone willingly.

That night in the bog, the explosion lit up the fog, and for a brief moment, she’d felt...something. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t sadness. On the surface, it was disappointment at the loss of a valuable ally, but when he’d come staggering through the fog, there’d been a frisson of unidentifiable emotion, something she wouldn’t consciously identify for two hundred days.

She hadn’t expected him to come back, but he had, even then. Even _then_ , when they’d known each other for less than a day, when she’d worn the chains and grease of his captors. She’d gone with the Vuvalini into the Salt, a strange emptiness in her chest, and within an hour he’d chased them down.

She has to push him now, to hold him for a moment at arm’s length, to stare at him as he’s blinking at her in concern.

He’s kiss-swollen and dazed with want. “S’alright?”

“You came back,” she breathes. “You came _back_.”

Anyone else might laugh, or look away, or otherwise make a flippant remark. Max just meets her gaze steadily, his eyes slate-gray and enduring as he chews his way around the words. “Can’t not,” he finally says.

“You leave.” It’s not an accusation, just a simple, uncomplicated fact. She knows the ghosts still linger; she’s seen them in his shaking hands, in the way he sometimes tracks the movement of things she herself can’t see. She knows the likelihood that he’ll run again. She knows it’s something beyond his control, like the nightmares that plague them both, like the moments when her throat closes up and his hands start to shake.

It won’t get better. It might, someday, get easier.

“You stay,” he says, and the way he says it make it sound like a reason, an explanation, a revelation he didn’t know he’d had, and everything suddenly crystallizes.

She’s helping him as much as he’s helping her.

For two hundred and eight days, she’s worn the weight of her guilt like chains around her neck, like a prosthesis that doesn’t fit, that chafes and burns with every breath. She’s been so caught up in her own pain that she hasn’t seen what he’s been trying to tell her. She doesn’t remember, but he’d given her his blood, the thing he’d been captured to steal, he’d given it _freely_ . She’s carried that misplaced shame around in her heart for so long, letting it poison her, when he’s still here, he’s come back, he’s watered her goddamn _plant_ , and he’s never once asked for anything in return.

He’d even said it, out there on the Salt. He’d said it and she hadn’t understood at all.

 _Together_.

He’s been saying it all along.

It’s a night for revelations, it seems.

Their scars are different. Their ways of survival are different. His impulse is to run, and hers is to stay, but somehow, between the two of them there’s an average, a middle ground, the space inside the hurricane where the howling is somehow quiet.

He’s still watching her, an anchor in space. She feels like she’s on a bike at the crest of a jump, that one perfect, weightless second before she starts to fall.

He must be able to see it in her face. She’s felt naked before, raw and exposed, but never like this. It’s always been painful, awful, and she’s wanted to clench against herself like a wound. This feels like the first breath of fresh air after a thousand days behind a gas mask, the first tingle of breeze on skin newly scrubbed of white  paint.

This feels wild. It feels _free_.

It feels like riding through the Green Place, the wind in her hair and Valkyrie at her back.

“I didn’t know,” she whispers, because it’s the only thing she _can_ say.

He shakes his head. “I...mmm.” The words clot in his mouth, and he inhales slowly, closing his eyes as he works through what he wants to say.

She gives him time, her human fingers measuring the steady beat of his heart.

“I didn’t either,” he finally manages, and he’s squinting away from her like he’s trying to stare at the sun. “I couldn’t - I didn’t-”

This is his redemption as much as it is hers.

She leans in again, capturing his stammer with her tongue, and as if she’s popped the clutch he surges forward, wrapping himself around her, burying himself in her, clinging to her like the day he’d handed her the gun. She lets herself be taken, lets him work his way down to bare skin.

They fall back onto the bed, a tangle of limbs and sweat and want. When he pauses to unlace his boots, she tugs off his shirt and kisses her way from the nape of his neck down his spine. When she reaches the first line of his tattoo, he shudders, and she pauses, just breathing, until she feels him relax.

 _We keep moving_.

Later, when he’s deep inside her, she digs her fingernails into the words on his back, and falls and falls and falls.

 

****

When he wakes up, it’s languid, a slow liquid rise that is both unfamiliar and luxurious. Furiosa is a comfortable warmth beside him, one long leg slung across his thighs. There is a vague ache in his bad knee, a stiffness in his lower back that tells him he’s slept hard, and deeply.

The white blur of madness is, for the moment, blissfully silent, hanging on the edges of his consciousness like a thin morning fog.

This is the most clearheaded he’s felt in more time than he cares to measure.

She isn’t Jessie. Jessie is gone, and Sprog is gone, and the beach house is gone in a way that he can’t rebuild, he can’t resurrect, he can’t reclaim. Like the hard knot of his knee, their absence will be an ache that follows him to the end of his days.

_We keep moving._

He'd been so afraid to grow, but now he's nothing but roots.

“For better or worse,” he says, and he doesn’t choke on the words. It’s the oldest thing he’s ever said, the oldest thing he’s ever spoken out loud. He can’t promise her all the things he’d promised Jessie, and even if he could, he doesn’t think she’d accept them.

“Would like a little more of ‘better’, and a little less ‘worse’,” she mumbles against his chest, eyes closed like a drowsing lizard. She’s as relaxed as he’s ever seen her, loose-limbed and radiating contentment.

She is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Out here, everything hurts,” he reminds her, and her chuckle radiates through his solar plexus and into his lungs.

She looks up at him, resting her cheek on her human hand. “I don’t think that everything that hurts is bad,” she says quietly.

In that moment, his heart is so full that he knows exactly what she means.


	151. Chapter 151

The Riders leave. It’s an inevitable thing; their spring is still damaged, and they’ve tarried longer than they’d hoped to. Repairs have been made as best as the Citadel can offer, and the bikes are heavily loaded with water, guzzoline and as much produce as Jilly can spare. Raygear had protested, but Capable shook her head.

“We can’t bring back your dead, but we can help your living,” she says firmly, and Wilgee glowers at the space above Capable’s shoulder.

“How far do these radio-things go, then?” she finally demands. She glances at Raygear, and he raises an eyebrow. “Would they...it’s days on a bike, but maybe we want one. Maybe we want to know who’s listening.” She scowls. “No sense you having all the tech.”

Capable grins. “I’ll talk to Toast. We don’t have the parts right now, but I think we can get them.”

“Not that we’d want to talk to you,” Wilgee adds quickly. “It’s for our own protection.”

Capable nods. “Of course.”

Raygear quickly dons his helmet, the opaque goggles and tattered mane hiding his faint smile.

Furiosa crouches by Val’s bike on the lift, tightening a lug nut that does not need tightening. “Half a year,” Val promises quietly. “Less, if I can convince Raygear to establish a regular trade run. Information for fuel, perhaps.”

“The War Rig’s still in the pass,” Furiosa says, concentrating on the wheel. “We need to salvage what we can of it. The current rig isn’t fast enough for a run to Bartertown.”

The Rider called Nyree comes up beside them, tugging on her riding gloves. “Bartertown’s too far for a lone rider,” she says hesitantly, “but in a group...when you go, might need an escort.”

Val raises an eyebrow. “Wilgee won’t go for it.”

Nyree snorts. “Wilgee knows what’s best. She talks big, but she en’t stupid.” She glances at Furiosa, then back to Val. “Ready to ride, or...do you need more time?”’

“Go,” says Furiosa, her knees popping as she straightens up. She points to Val’s front tire. “Rubber’s going soft right there. It’s going to need a patch soon, but if you stay in the sand you’ll be fine-”

Valkyrie leans over to pull their foreheads together. “I _will_ see you again.”

“Make sure you clean your filters once you get there-”

Rolling her eyes, Val wraps Furiosa in a hard, fierce hug. “Remember what I said,” she murmurs.

Furiosa doesn’t want her to go. Val is warm and familiar and she was _dead_ , and all at once, panic spikes hard, and she can only bury her face in Val’s neck and cling to her as the world spins around them. She can’t hold Val here, and she can’t go with her, not with the Rock Riders still eyeing her with their hands at their guns. It isn’t fair, it isn’t _fair_ , and the childish whine is startling in its intensity. She’s only just gotten Val _back_ , she’s not ready to give her up again-

Nyree is standing off to the side. “I’ll watch her tires,” she offers quietly, and Furiosa can’t decide whether to scream in wild jealousy or cry with gratitude.

“Riders! Saddle up!” Wilgee bellows. “Got to be faster than daylight, or we’re maggots for Buzzards. Let’s go!”

“Half a year,” Val repeats, and presses her forehead against Furiosa’s again, the contact equal parts pain and reassurance. “Take care of yourself, Furi.”

She can’t breathe past the hard lump in her throat, but as the Riders descend on the lift, the treadmillers chanting their cadence-song, she realizes: this is Val. This is always Val. She’s on a bike, tall and proud with crow feathers at her pauldrons and her rifle slung on her back. She was broken, but she’s still moving. Her long black hair is tied beneath her Rider helmet, the wild mane of torn fabric shivering as she revs her engine. She is the same person she was when she leaned against Furiosa as they cornered on their mothers’ bike. She is constant and unending.

 _We keep moving_.

As the Riders make their way to the open desert, fading into a distant cloud on the horizon, Capable comes up next to Furiosa and hooks an elbow around her human arm. “Are you okay?” she asks, an enduring storm of red hair and concern.

It’s not going to stop hurting, but with the surprise of an unexpected road bump, she thinks she actually is.

 

****

 

The rainstorm after the siege was a seminal event, a phenomenon so infrequent that it will be recalled for a thousand days. The rain may be how everyone else marks that day, but Furiosa still thinks of it as the day Max returned, a miracle in itself. She can’t stop herself from counting days, but she’s trying to count them from something other than her abduction; she’s trying out different moments in her head - the day she turned the wheel, the rainstorm, the day they fixed the pumps - to see which fits the best.

Two hundred days after Heirloom’s birth, two hundred and seventy two days after the rainstorm, three hundred and ninety-seven days since she turned the wheel, seven thousand three hundred and ninety-seven days since she was stolen, she’s washing engine grease and metal filings from her human hand, the sweet ache of a hard morning in the Repair Shop radiating through her arms and shoulders.

Mari touches her shoulder. “Furiosa. Walk with me?”

They end up in the Organic Mechanic’s old rooms. Furiosa has avoided the place as fastidiously as she’d avoided the Vault, going only when it seemed she had no other choice, and the change is dramatic. The rooms have been cleaned and whitewashed, pungent herbs brought in from the gardens. It’s a storage room now, cool and dry.

“I promised Cheedo I’d bring some more thyme,” Mari says, pointing to a fragrant bundle on a shelf. “It’s a potent antiseptic. You’re young - grab that, will you?” She glances sideways at Furiosa. “She’s good, that girl. Better than any other initiate I’ve ever trained. I’ve taught her what I know, but now, she just needs time and practice. That’s not something I can give her.”

Furiosa hums in agreement, burying her nose in the herbs in her arms and blissfully overwhelmed by the clean, woody scent.

Mari pauses a moment, considering Furiosa with an expression that’s oddly wistful, a little sad. “You’re doing well, my girl. You know that, don’t you?”

Furiosa frowns. She’s not perfect - mothers, she’ll never be everything she needs to be - but she’s sleeping more than she’s not, and she’s eating enough that there’s softness in her body, in her belly and thighs that Max finds utterly entrancing; consequently their joint efforts to repair his vehicle have languished in favor of more private collaboration. There have been a handful of Buzzard incursions, but with the Bullet Farm solidly in Citadel hands, the Wasteland for once is almost at peace. Capable is forging ahead with the Repair Boys’ support, and the downspout to the Wretched is almost complete. Further plans are being drafted for a holding tank at ground level, for irrigation for crops, for proper housing.

No one has heard from the Riders, and Furiosa’s heart aches when she looks out over the horizon. They’re out there, she knows they are, and she knows Val is fine. She has to be. There’s still the War Rig to be reclaimed, trade routes to be reestablished.

There’s a radio to deliver.

Beside her, Mari chuckles, abruptly jolting Furiosa back to the present. “Always so serious. This place lives because of you, pet. Be kind to yourself.” She pulls Furiosa down to kiss her forehead. “No matter what happens, remember that.”

It almost feels like a benediction.

The next morning, none of the Vuvalini are at breakfast, and when questioned, Dag just shakes her head solemnly.

Furiosa finds the women in one of the upper bedrooms, Amy and Cheedo curled around Mari in the bed, Tamar and Maadi on the floor beside them. Amy is stroking Mari’s hair, a peaceful expression on the sleeping healer’s face.

“She chose this,” says Cheedo, and despite her red-rimmed eyes, her voice is steady. “This is what she wanted. Before it got too bad.”

Furiosa feels the ground beneath her turn to air, but somehow she’s still standing.

In retrospect, it seems obvious. The limp that never left, the way she’d favored more than just her leg. Subtly convincing others to lift the things she could not. She’d never given any hint that she was sick, but of course she’d known the symptoms. Whatever killed the Green Place, whatever had stolen the babies from Furiosa’s generation - whatever it was, Mari felt it, and knew it, and chose to brew herself one last cup of tea.

They bury her on the highest terrace, a peach pit tucked against her chest. Around her sprout the seedlings of those who went before, Pups and Milkers and War Boys who traveled the Fury Road to rest in the Garden.

Less than a week later, Ace goes to sleep in a corner of the garage with a Pup comfortably draped on his chest; the Pup wakes up. Ace does not.

He may not have gone shiny and chrome, but as Maz points out during his Witnessing, it’s as historic a death as any War Boy could hope for. “We’re all half-life,” the Repair Boys points out, “but Ace - he had, like, three-quarters.”

Just when she thinks she has no more tears to shed, Furiosa finds another well as bottomless as the Citadel’s aquifer.

It’s a hard, hard thing, moving forward, but at the end of the days, there’s nowhere else to go.

The amaranth is growing fast and thick, velvety red flowers clustered in tight bundles that bob in the wind. The canola is tall enough to swallow a Pup, fierce yellow blossoms reaching skyward, and the second crop of chia is not far behind, long stalks heavy with purple flowers. Olives flourish in rocky places where the soil is still thin, hardy mints staking their claim in untended patches. Long vines wind their way down the walls, creeping roots clinging to sheer cliffs. The Citadel is covered in green, the windmills a steady, trustworthy thump as the water flows clean and pure.

“I’m glad we came back,” Dag says quietly, shifting Heirloom on her hip. Her long hair is pale as the fuzzy stalks of millet, and the collection of sticks and bones she’s braided into it has accumulated into a substantial bundle that she wears at the nape of her neck. The three streaks of green are a permanent fixture on her forehead, Miss Giddy’s tattoo needles etching tiny vines and leaves into her skin. “This was always our Green Place.” She squints at the horizon, then at Furiosa. “You didn’t know, but you did it anyway. Don’t know if we’ve said thank you for that.”

Furiosa’s throat is too tight to speak. Heirloom whines, fretful and eager for movement, and when Dag sets her down, she’s toddling off, her unsteady gait a determined echo of her father’s imperious waddle. Despite her progenitor, Heirloom will grow up safe and loved among her own Many Mothers. As long as Furiosa still breathes, she will do whatever it takes to ensure that Dag’s child will never, ever be stolen.

It’s not until days later, hefting a Pup up onto the roof of Riz’s car to walk him through some basic cable attachments, that she realizes she’s done exactly what she and Val always intended. She’s brought in children from the wastes, and even though most of them were slated to be Joe’s wives and slaves, now she’s guiding them and protecting them as if she were one of the Many Mothers.

It’s the first time she’s felt like a Vuvalini again.

 

****

 

Furiosa isn’t the only one who counts the days, and Capable holds her own number carefully, a faint, fragile hope like the heartbeat that’s taken root beneath her own.

She’d known long before she’d finally sought Mari’s confirmation - she knows her body, its cycles as regular as the moon - but she’s waited, terrified of wishing too hard, terrified of what Keno’s reaction might be, until the secret was no longer easy to keep.

“How far along do you think you are?” Mari had asked.

“Sixty-eight days.” She thinks it was just after Heirloom’s birth, when they saw each other so infrequently. When she’d first suspected, she’d gone back through her ledger, fingering each date with quiet excitement.

The old Vuvalini had blinked. “Well then. Does your man know?”

“He belongs to himself,” Capable reminded her gently. “I just- I want to wait a little longer.” She’s known loss too keenly to hope, but _oh_ , she can’t stop herself from burning with it.

Finally, when the flutter is unmistakable against her palm, when her heart is too full to keep to herself, she swallows back her fear and tells him.

“Are you sure?” His hands are as sweaty as that day he’d first asked to kiss her. “And...but...do you really think...because with the Immortan…?”

Even after all this time, Keno still can’t imagine doing something Joe couldn’t, his anxious eyes darting down to her belly and back up to her face. “It took easily and quickly,” she reassures him, taking his face in her hands. She can’t promise the child will be healthy even if she manages to carry it to term, but...even Mari was cautiously optimistic. “You are not Joe.”

Capable has seen freedom from the cab of the War Rig, and she’s seen Valkyrie run across dunes to embrace Furiosa, and she’s stood atop the Citadel’s greening buttes. None of these compares to the joy suddenly incandescent in Keno’s kiss, and the tiny life that’s growing strong and fierce between them.

 


	152. Chapter 152

**Epilogue**

 

The car is low and sleek, the legendary rumble of its rebuilt V8 echoing off the tower walls like a beating heart. It isn’t his Interceptor, given as a gift to a lone man on a mad journey; it’s something better, a protective shell, lovingly crafted by hands both flesh and metal. It’s stocked with all the provisions a budding sanctuary could provide: fresh, clean water, repair supplies, and edibles carefully prepared to survive a long journey. Cheedo keeps tucking more medical supplies - tinctures, bandages and poultices - into cavities in the car’s chassis, and Capable fusses about maps and potential threats. The Repair Boys have gone over every inch of the vehicle when they think Max isn’t looking, and scatter like unrepentant lizards when he catches them. 

One night, a tiny trail of vines appears etched into hood near the supercharger intake, the design almost invisible against the protective matte coat of Gastown bitumen. No one will confess, but Furiosa knows why Dag did it: no matter where they go, they’ll carry a small piece of the new Green Place with them. 

They don’t have a set destination, just an empty, open desert to explore. Somewhere, someone has technology from Before; they are the sellers of the Buzzards’ night vision, the ones that maintain the satellites that lazily drift across the night sky, and they need to be found. The War Rig is buried under rubble, and its salvageability needs to be assessed. There’s a radio to deliver to the Rock Riders, and someone in Bartertown who knows about medication from Before. 

“Ready?” Max asks. 

“Yes,” says Furiosa. She’s in the passenger seat, her face as bare and open as the feral promise of the Wasteland. 

His lips quirk, and he hums in agreement.

The exhaust cracks as the car leaps forward into the desert. As he drops the gearshift into fifth, her human hand closes over his, the pommel of the shifter vibrating beneath them like a living thing. 

They leave together. Their fingers stay intertwined long after the Citadel fades below the horizon.

 

_ fin _


	153. Chapter 153

**Author’s note**

It’s June, 2015. I think it’s a Sunday. Husbandthing and I are on the freeway. We’re on our way to explore the new Cabela’s that has just opened in the suburbs - we’ve heard it’s huge and even has its own aquarium of live trout.

“So you know how I read a lot of fanfiction,” I hedge.

He looks away from the road, says yes. He’s curious, supportive.

“Well, sometimes I write, too. And I kind of wrote a thing. For Mad Max.” We’ve seen it four times in theaters so far. It’s only been out a couple of weeks, and I am enraptured. “I posted it. And, um,” I swallow too much air, “I’m already up to a hundred hits.”

It feels impossible. It’s only a couple of chapters. It’s nothing compared to anything, but I’ve done it, and people are reading .

I wrote when I was little, constantly and prolifically. By high school, a combination of outside pressure and burgeoning mental health issues made everything more complicated, so I just...stopped. For the last fifteen years, I didn’t think about it, except for a vague quiet mourning of a hobby I’d loved as a kid. I read fanfic, and occasionally did a few thousand words, but nothing concrete, nothing substantial.

Then Furiosa fucking tackled Max onscreen and put his ass in the dust, and the world completely shifted. (What a day, what a lovely day that was.)

I don’t know how I’ve written this. I don’t know why it’s this, and not something else. All I know is that I started writing again, and it was crazy , and then people started responding, and that was crazy, and somehow between that car ride to the fucking trout tank (which was very impressive) and today - the day I’m writing and posting this - everything has changed. I’ve been cheerfully and unrepentantly dragged welcomed into a community of incredibly talented creative souls, and they have become my family. I’ve grown as a person and as a writer, and if nothing else, L&B has proven that This Is A Thing I Can Do. It wasn’t something I just did as a precocious kid. I’ve made amazing friends because of L&B. I turned 30 while writing L&B. I’ve worked through some of my own craziness. I went to Wasteland Weekend to meet up with my internet friends, so I feel like I can safely say I went camping for the first time because of L&B.

If you’re reading this, I owe you for that.  

Fic is a precious thing. It’s a community made entirely out of love. We write because we love the world, and we read because we’re hungry for more.

L&B is my love letter to this fandom, and to the creative forces that gave birth to it. It’s a love letter to the movie I dragged people to see until even the preternaturally-patient Husbandthing finally said, “...can we please see something else?”

I want to thank all of you who’ve read and commented, and especially those of you who’ve stuck with me the entire way despite inconsistent posting and the sheer size of this project. I especially want to give a shout-out to my slack group, who alternatively offer loving support and or galvanizing ass-kicking as the situation requires. Finally, ultimately, I owe deepest thanks to George Miller and Margaret Sixel, who not only created a mad, furious vision of the future, but have also graciously stated their support for fan theories and ideas.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing after this - napping, probably, or some of the house chores I keep neglecting in order to play in someone else’s universe - but come visit me on [tumblr ](http://sacrificethemtothesquid.tumblr.com/)and say hi if you’d like. I'll be doing some light editing over the next couple of months, correcting spelling and refining grammar. I'll make a note here when it's done. 

You are all lovely and perfect, every single one of you.

~ squid

P.S. If you want to write your own spin-off of this, translation, whatever - you have my blessing. Just let me know so I can add it to the Works Inspired By section. I have a (very vague) plan to podfic it eventually for accessibility, and I'll update about that if it ever comes to fruition.  

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Last Night A DJ Saved My Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284039) by [KirkyPet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirkyPet/pseuds/KirkyPet)
  * [Pick Up The Pieces](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11596452) by [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas)




End file.
